Retrospective celebrates 45 years of St. John artist's work

For St. John artist Janet Cook-Rutnik being an artist is not so much a career, as it is a vocation.

“We don’t ever retire, we hope that we can afford to keep working,” Cook-Rutnik told The Daily News. A retrospective of Cook-Rutnik’s artwork, created over the last 45 years, will be on display at St. Croix’s Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts starting on Saturday. The collection is 45 pieces, including paintings, videos, and original prints, made between 1978 and 2023, that provides a deeply personal visual record of the changes in the territory’s physical and cultural landscape.

Cook-Rutnik’s interest in art started at an early age, as she was sketching in class at 6 years old. She would go on to study at the State University of New York and took “all of the art courses possible.” She studied sculpture at the graduate level with Richard Stankiewicz, an American sculptor known for his work with scrap metals. “He treated us like fellow artists, I learned a lot from him,” Cook-Rutnik said.