Join me for Artists Sunday, tomorrow, November 27. It’s like Small Business Saturday, but exclusively for art.
Started in 2020, Artists Sunday unites artists, creators, and makers across the US for the world’s largest art event, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, encouraging consumers to shop with artists.
I’m excited to participate in this great program bringing artists and communities together.
Visit my online shop at Artrepreneur for works ready to ship now. Watch the shop for new works coming before Christmas.
You can also email me at jen@jenfriesarts.com to inquire about any artwork on this site, even if it’s not yet listed in the shop.
Plus, if you are or will be in the Somerville, MA, area any time, email me to arrange local, in-person pick-up of your purchases, and save the cost and delay of holiday shipping.
The big news this March is that I have launched a new online shop for my artworks. You can visit the Jen Fries Store at Artrepreneur by clicking the Shop menu tab, above. (Right-click to open the shop in a new tab or window, if you prefer.)
Artrepreneur is a multi-service platform for visual artists, and so far I am very pleased with them. I think you will be, too.
I try to keep third-party services to a minimum. I don’t like interposing other people between me and you. I like to deal direct. I had planned to set up my website for e-commerce so anyone who would like to own some of my work can just, you know, go ahead and buy it off me, direct.
But I have learned that there are a lot of schnickety little tech details to setting up one’s own online e-commerce site, and I suck at them. Mmm, boy, do I ever suck at that stuff. I learned this the hard way. Ugh, ye gods.
So, to quote my favorite author, Lawrence Sterne, “I did at last what I should have done at first.”
Namely, I found a third-party platform to provide the service I need at this point in my career. Yay, Artrepreneur!
Artrepreneur’s main selling point to me is that it is designed specifically for visual artists, by visual artists. The people who run this platform know how the arts business works, and also how it doesn’t work. What it is, and what it isn’t. They have put together a raft of systems and services that make a lot of sense to me, and have so far been easier for me to deal with than just about any other marketplace or business platform.
I no longer have to try to shoehorn myself as an artist into a site that’s really designed for different kinds of work and business. And I no longer have to try to force myself to learn a skill set that’s way far outside my comfort zone at a time when I need to put much more energy into the creative side of my career.
Also, as of this writing, Artrepreneur charges no transaction fees or commissions, unlike almost every other arts platform and marketplace out there. Artrepreneur is a subscription service. I pay them an annual membership fee, for which I get the services I need, and that’s it. They have no other involvement in any transaction between you and me. Simple.
So please, visit the Shop. Take a look at the first set of works I have ready for immediate sale. And let me know what you think of the set-up via a comment or email.
And of course, if you prefer to deal really directly, or would like to buy a work you see on this site which isn’t listed for sale yet, or if you have any other questions, please always feel free to email me at jen@jenfriesarts.com.
Currently in the Shop
Click the Shop tab for prices, shipping, and details for these works.
This has been a difficult winter for us at the apartment attached to the studio. I’ll tell you about it at some future date. For now, suffice to say, we are dealing with unhappy things, and the least of my troubles is that my nearly decade-old Mac computer finally broke down. I write this on a loaner PC (thanks, Mom), and due to various techly things I’m not coping with right now, I can’t upload any of my new photos to prove that I’ve actually been doing stuff. So… whatever. On the scale of things, the computer is annoying because it doesn’t matter, but it does interrupt.
I’ve been working on paper sculptures of eggs and rabbits, naturally, because yay-spring. Also working on my occult detective novel – again. And that one ambitious project. They’re all coming along rather nicely. I wish I could show them to you.
Instead, I’m adding some spring-ly works to the Shop, beginning with four small landscape paintings, the Blue Lakes. They are kind of misty and moody, and they speak both to my state of mind and the time of year. I used paste-paint on paper and improvised with folds, blots, pulls, and mark-making. In some you can spot finger impressions, creases, and other flaws helping to build the image of a watery landscape.
The Blue Lakes Series
Every so often this March, look for more paintings and collages to the Shop, in celebration of the season.
Someone I admire recently observed that creative work is therapeutic. It takes one out of oneself. It’s true. These past few weeks, the meditative ASMR of my pen on the paper, and the brush applying layers of paste and paper, and birds jumping around in the tree by my window has been my refuge. Engaging all my senses in my materials – the textures, sounds, smells, colors – making adjustments as I go along, not overthinking things but just floating in the process – it’s pretty much the only thing that lets me forget my cares for a while, lets me feel just free and existing.
It doesn’t last, but the work is always there, waiting, anytime I need a break. There’s a life-lesson there, after this traumatic year. If you have something that gets your mind off yourself, that feeds your senses, and leaves you with something positive at the end of the day or hour, indulge in it. It’s medicine, and we all need it, as surely as we need a vaccine.
It’s been all snow, ice, mellow jazz in the background, warm soft clothes with big fluffy scarves, bird watching, art puttering, and spiced chai with cream since last I posted. In keeping with February in Massachusetts, my view has been largely inward – spring cleaning the junk inside my head as well as in my rooms, and avoiding the freezing damp. I hope you are all keeping well and warm, despite storms and craziness.
I’ve been working on a new-to-me water-media technique, using soft pastels like watercolor. I started doing this on small sketches sometime last year, and it was kind of a breakthrough for me. The graininess of pastel pigments gives the paintings a subtle, impressionistic texture compared to watercolor. There’s a dreamy effect that I’m falling in love with. Plus wet pastel adheres to the paper well, as long as you don’t lay it on too thick or in too many layers. No dust floating off.
For tiny drawings in my sketchbook, I just lift color off the stick with a wet brush, treating the sticks like pan watercolors. However, the pastels won’t flow as freely across a surface, so for larger paintings and washes I need to experiment a bit.
Some artists grind pastels to powder and mix them with additives and binders to make them into proper paints. I’m way too lazy for that. But then I thought a stick of color is rather like a stick of ink, isn’t it, so I turned to Chinese and Japanese brush painting, for which solid ink is ground with water on a stone to make liquid ink of the desired consistency. This monochrome study of branches was done by grinding a pastel stick in that manner.
Inspired by the dogwood outside my window
I am quite pleased with this method so far. It suits me. The grinding provides a meditative moment to get into the head space. I need to work on the mis-en-place arrangement of tools, play with colors, put together an equipment kit, and so forth. I’ll keep you posted on progress. Meanwhile, this small painting will be available in the shop shortly, along with other works that put me in mind of the season.
That’s all for now. Remember your masks and all that, and take care of yourselves.
January/February Photo Journal
The dogwood
Getting ready, this time to make the new sketchbook
Staff meeting with Studio Assistant Scipio
Meeting members of the wildlife division for lunch
The view from the studio for the past several weeks
Jen Fries Arts 