Ojalá, Selah, Lateda

Return to Figure Drawing

There were a lot of wonderful things about living in Cancun, I could go on and on, but one of my favorite things was La Casa de la Cultura, which translates literally into The House of the Culture. It was there that I first learned about Alebrijes and made my first paper maché mask. I spent long hours in the ceramics studio with an amazing couple of sculptures, and starting in 2003 I participated in weekly figure drawing sessions. (Some examples from then can still be seen on the old cancunarts.com site.) But when we left Cancun (four years ago on Wednesday) i had to leave all that behind.  I am able to continue with my paper maché, no problemo, but I hadn’t had the chance to work with clay or draw from a model in over 4 years. I was thrilled when I heard that the Dawson County Arts Council was going to have weekly figure drawing, and then very disappointed to hear there weren’t enough people interested for it to happen.  However, a small group of artists decided to go ahead and meet in one of their studios and hire their own model once a week and as I had expressed interest in the DCAC group they invited me! Friday I drove out to a beautiful farm slightly north of town and joined three other artists for three hours of drawing. The model overslept so we ended up taking turns drawing each other, but that was fine. I’m not sure how to explain it, but there is just something very different about the experience of sitting with a group of artists and drawing from the same model. I love it. I’m not sure if the difference is based more on having a life model or the communal aspect. I guess I could experiment with drawing still lifes in a group, or drawing a model by myself, but in the meantime I am just so happy to have  a chance to be part of this group. Like I said we have lived here for four years now, but it is just now starting to feel like I am part of the community. (Click on the images to see them bigger.)

Art in Georgia

As an artist and resident of Georgia I was dismayed to hear that the House
Appropriations Committee voted yesterday to eliminate the Georgia Council
for the Arts budget for FY 2011 and that GCA will cease to exist.

I know that times are difficult and that many agencies are taking cuts,
but to get rid of the arts agencies all together is a tragedy. Art is
important to our state, our communities and our individual lives. Art is
important to our souls, it separates us from the animals and machines.
If this passes…

1 - Georgia will be the only state and territory that will have no state arts agency.
2 - We will lose the Grassroots Arts Program that ensures there is arts programming in every Georgia County.
3 - Georgia will lose tax money that is reinvested in our state through the National Endowment for the Arts. This money is entirely contingent on the GCA budget being at least $900,000. This money from the NEA funds programs in every Georgia County.
4 - We will lose more jobs in this economic crisis.

Remember that investing in the arts pays off both in tax revenue, jobs, tourism - it’s one industry that is alive and well in spite of the overall economy. Please contact your state legislators TODAY, and let other voters know of the situation before Georgia becomes the only state or territory in the U.S. without a state arts agency.

I just wrote our state legislators and  I hope you’ll take a moment to do the same.

Please Follow This Link to Take Action on Important Arts Issues
http://capwiz.com/artsusa/ga/utr/2/?a=14931951&i=98643886&c=

Thanks,
Jennifer

Trusting Prophecy and Talking about It

When I first decided I wanted to have a blog the idea was to have a place to share via the written word as well as the visual image. I expected to write regularly about what was going on in my life, what I was reading, and what I was thinking about in general. I imagined I would share drawings here and there. In October of 2007 when I started this thing I wasn’t doing much in the way of “real” art, most of the images I created were doodled on post-it notes while I was supposedly busy “designing” yellow page ad after yellow page ad. Then came Illustration Friday. IF was an amazing way for me to start purposefully making art again and then actually share it. My posts became more and more just my responses to whatever that Friday’s post was, which was was fine. However for some time now I have been aware that I wanted to start actually sharing words here again. There has been a lot going on in my life and so many mornings as I write to myself in my journal I think that whatever it is I am writing might be worth sharing in this form. I have a thing about starting though. I feel like coming back to write should start with a bang. I should start with “Today is the first day of the year 2010″ or “Today I quit the job I’ve had for nine years,” or even “Today I started the Daniel Fast.” But those days have come and gone. It has been 87 days since the year started, 77 days since I quit my job, and 15 days since I started the Daniel Fast. Not a round number amongst them, but hey, a girl has to start somewhere. So here I am writing despite the fact that I have no dramatic “today is” kind of news.

There is a lot to say about quitting my job and doing the Daniel Fast and how the two are related, but today I want to share a sculpture I finished a few weeks ago and entered in a local juried art festival. It is called Trusting Prophecy and is built of paper maché on top of an orange juice bottle. I didn’t use any paint in its decoration, other than some ribbon and a rock, and that orange juice bottle, all the details are made of paper. I must admit that when I entered it, along with 5 other pieces in the Cumming FUMC Festival of Arts I thought it would surely be accepted in the show and maybe even win a prize. However I was wrong. Of the six pieces I entered only one was accepted in the show and the author of the acceptance letters made a point of letting us all know that they had  worked hard to make sure each artist had at least one piece accepted. The fact that Opinion (Proverbs 15:28) will be in the show is a consolation prize that did not make me feel any better. I think I would have rather had all my pieces be rejected out right and pretend the show never even existed than to have to show up to drop off my little piece on second hand canvas board to the show, attend the opening, and watch someone else win the prizes. My first reaction was to spew as much venom as the Aztec looking soul in the accepted piece. I wanted to rant and rave that the people in Cumming, Georgia don’t know anything about art anyway, to justify my rejection by deciding the show was probably going to be full of watercolors of kittens and daisies in rustic buckets anyway.But that is not what these pieces are about. Proverbs 15:28 says that,  “The heart of the righteous weighs its answers, but the mouth of the wicked gushes evil,” and the prophecy I cite in the title of the paper maché piece is from Exekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” This piece of art truly is a visual expression of my prayer to love people better, to have a heart that is made more of flesh than of stone. Perhaps its sole purpose was accomplished just by its being made. Perhaps it was too personal to be shared in an art show, even a church sponsored one. Or perhaps the purpose was to have this rejection, this humbling, to remind me of how much I still need to be praying this prayer and trusting in this prophecy. At least I believe I am heading in the right direction in this spiritual journey of mine, perhaps this whole experience will even bring me a step closer.