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| It was for love of the arts and the compassion for Vietnamese women that Jenny joined Co VN. She is an attorney by day and an artist by night. She attended Lincoln and Golden Gate Law Schools and currently is pursuing an art history degree at San Jose State University. Jenny is known for her unique style of combining beadwork and oil painting. |
 | Elements: Jenny Do blends the traditional Eastern belief on life and nature with the Western view on time and anatomy in this painting. The five elements (metal, water, wood, fire, and earth) compete for the viewer's attention in this painting. Each element can enhance a second element and yet at the same time neutralize a third. There is attraction and repulsion among the elements, a duality that creates movement and life. The viewer who takes a closer look will see that the elements develop (or decay, depending on his or her point of view) into a human ribcage. Once this anatomical image is uncovered, other biological references come to the fore. Jenny Do views the body as the combination of elements and forces in nature, and the creation of the time concept necessarily implies a beginning and an end to the body, and thus to nature itself. The artist employs primary colors to emphasize the differences among the elements, which can be interpreted as different worlds, cultures, or beliefs, thus forcing the viewer to feel the urgency to overcome these differences, so as to preserve the fundamental element that is shared by all of us, that which we call humanity. |
The Two Infinities: The title of this work reminds the viewer of the essay on the two infinites ("Les deux infinis") by Blaise Pascal. Here, Jenny Do borrows Pascal's language to title her work, which is her spiritual tribute to the wonder of nature. She contrasts the grandeur of the cosmos, the great infinite, to the intricacies of the matter at its molecular levels, the small infinite. She also injects Piet Mondrian's search for the "equivalence of the opposites" in expressing the mystical unity of the universe. Here, in the spirit of Mondrian's ideals, Jenny Do balances the vertical and the horizontal alignments of her pictorial elements: the celestial grandeur in vertical and the material abundance in horizontal.
To view Jenny Do's work solely from a Western background would be incomplete. Born in Vietnam, the artist holds dear her Eastern belief: the universe begins from the Great Extreme that gives birth to the Two Opposites, the Yin and the Yang, and from there all that constitute life. Yin and Yang are opposite yet complementary as the moon to the sun, the female to the male, or any such opposing and complementing forces in the cosmos. The Two Infinites, the great and the small, from that perspective, are merely part of one another, as what the Yin is to the Yang. It is in the extremely small that one finds the answer for the great, and vice versa. Analogically, as much as the West differs from the East, the twain shall meet as they complement one another.
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 | Day After Day |
| In The Thick Of City Dust |  |
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