On my desk

Updates from my desk

New Traditions

This past Christmas as I watched my three adult children and their partners take in traditional items that mean ALOT to me didn’t seem to hit them in the same way. It got me thinking, what will their traditions be? What sorts of things will they collect to refelct this season? Their partners have different traditions of course as well as religious traditions. What imagery will they want to surround themselves with (if any)?

I asked them some questions about this - even asked about the traditional red and green color palette and if that was important to them. Their answers were informative and inspiring to me.

I’ve been developing ideas for Christmas tree toppers for the 25 - 35 audience. They are shaking up our ideas of the old world order and their future trditions and imagery/color palette choices will reflect this.

Here are some of my ideas I’ve been creating with paper maches and acrylic gouache. They are prototypes but the bug will go to my son Parker and the owl to my son Simon. I made my daughter and her husband a felt Santa developed from an illustration I did as part of my 50 figures series.

Dung Beetle - to roll away the crap from the year before and clear the energy for the new year.

Owl - gazing over the family to bring greater connectedness and wisdom

Santa flying over a village to bless the communities around the world - this one is the most in process of the three paper mache tree toppers.

Felt Santa created from my illustration:

Word Daily

An ode to ignored emails…

Does anyone else get emails on a daily that they do not unsubscribe to because they think they’ll get to them at some point but actually rarely do?

For me, one of these is Word Daily. I want to have better vocabulary. I thought I would play with some lettering and spot illustrations/doodles from my sketchbooks for a bit. The lettering is not fussy, just helps me learn the word.

Inch by Inch

August 25, 2014

I feel comfortable revealing my Global Talent Search submission as the finalists are announced tomorrow.

"Tiny Terrarium"  GTS submission 2014 — "Tiny Terrarium" GTS submission 2014

I am glad I have been completely distracted by a short term project these past ten days or so. It really kept my mind off of the outcome of this contest. I feel I am in a good place - even as my demons keep asking, "Who do you think you're kidding?" ... if I am lucky enough to be one of the 50 out of 999 artists who are given a second assignment and are advanced to the next round I feel I am ready. If I am not awarded a place in the next round I feel I have a direction and intention and certainly projects that are waiting in the wings. I will be inspired and ready to work no matter what. So, tonight I will try to sleep and hope that these two quotes guide my dreams:

“Trust that when the answer is no there is a far better yes down the road”

— anonymous

“inch by inch success is a cinch! ”

— Lilla Rogers (http://lillarogers.com)

About Jane

Every time I start a new series of works I start with a sense of wonder, a speeding up of my pulse, a feeling like I can’t catch up to the things I want to express and the places I want the work to take me.