Jessica Lang’s Her Door to the Sky first premiered in 2017, the centennial celebration of painter Georgia O’Keeffe’s first solo exhibition in New York. After nearly 10 years, the piece returns to the PNB stage as part of our ALL LANG program. Her Door to the Sky is inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s Patio Door Series, completed between 1946 and 1956. Keep reading to learn more about this collection of paintings and the ballet that they inspired!
Georgia O’Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887, in Wisconsin. By the 1920s, she was a highly regarded artist, known for her paintings of the New York skyline and her depictions of lush flowers. Around this time, she began regular summer visits to New Mexico. After her husband Alfred Stieglitz’s death, O’Keeffe moved to the state permanently in 1949, and she began exploring the desert landscape in her work. With her eyesight failing, O’Keeffe painted her last unassisted oil painting in 1972. Throughout her late 80s and 90s, she continued making art with the help of several assistants until her death in 1986.
O’Keeffe had two homes in New Mexico: the remote Ghost Ranch and her winter residence, Abiquiu. When O’Keeffe first encountered it in 1935, Abiquiu was an abandoned pueblo-style adobe hacienda about 60 miles north of Santa Fe. The 5,000 square foot property centers a plazuela, a patio surrounded by four walls and open to the sky. It took four years to renovate the estate, which O’Keeffe later filled with midcentury furniture, animal bones, and desert rocks. Another highlight of the property was the well-irrigated garden, where O’Keeffe grew food for herself and friends. Today, visitors can tour Abiquiu, which is maintained by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
One thing drew O’Keeffe to Abiquiu: the patio door. She says, “It was a good-sized patio with a long wall with a door on one side. The wall with a door in it was something I had to have. It took me ten years to get it – three more years to fix up the house so I could live in it – and after that the wall with a door was painted many times.” Indeed, O’Keeffe painted over twenty paintings of the patio door, creating the Patio Door series. The door itself is a simple wooden, recessed double door, but O’Keeffe’s paintings of it are varied. Many are geometric and abstract, with shifting pastel colors. Some of the paintings show leaves or snow blowing into frame. Sometimes, the door is centered with a straight on view; other times, it’s approached from an angle. O’Keeffe said, “I’m always trying to paint that door – I never quite get it.”
Jessica Lang shares, “It took O’Keeffe 13 years to buy her home and fix it up, all because she saw that door. I was attracted to its significance and the idea of home.” In Her Door to the Sky, Lang’s inspiration is clear. A prominent set piece with a central square cutout and smaller cutouts running across the bottom mimics O’Keeffe’s paintings. Shifting lighting creates several vignettes throughout the piece, each like their own Patio Door painting. You can see O’Keeffe’s influence in other ways too: swirling, sunset-colored costumes, far-reaching arms, and a tender quality. Lang says she was interested in “expansive space. I felt it was necessary to capture the inspiration of light and color in O’Keeffe’s work.”
Her Door to the Sky is a visual delight, indeed evoking the rich desert colors and never-ending skies of O’Keeffe’s Patio Door series. Experience it yourself with our ALL LANG program, onstage May 29 – June 7, 2026!
Sources / Continued Reading:
Daly, Ann. (Accessed 2026, April 28). Georgia O’Keeffe’s Door. https://mygeorgiaokeeffe.com/georgia-okeeffes-door/
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. (Accessed 2026, April 28). Georgia O’Keeffe: Abiquiu Views. https://www.okeeffemuseum
Loeffler-Gladstone, Nicole. (2017, February 23). Jessica Lang’s “Her Door to the Sky” Brings Desert Colors to the Pacific Northwest. Pointe Magazine. https://pointemagazine.com/jessica-lang-dance/
