Tag: Art magic

Somerville Open Studios & Wild Rabbit Magic

Jen2 Comments

This weekend, May 2 & 3, 12-6 pm, is Somerville Open Studios, the biggest arts event in our quaint and scenic town. Naturally, I’m behind my time in letting you all know about it, but such is me.

I’ll be turning my front porch into a mini exhibition celebrating the spring season, its moods, symbols, weather, and magic, featuring our wild city rabbits among others.

Click here for details and directions. I’m in the East Somerville side of town.

Weather Note: The forecast is for “chance” of rain this weekend. Please subscribe to this website or follow me on Bluesky to receive updates in case I get rained out on Saturday or Sunday.

You can also see my collage-assemblage, “Pink Yarrow,” at Somerville Museum, and a new collage-painting, “April,” at the Brickbottom Gallery, both indoors.

Enjoy a sneak peak at some new works in progress, which I hope to bring out for SOS.

On the magic of rabbits.

Rabbit, bring me luck.
Rabbit, bring me many.
Rabbit, bring me happiness,
But for my foe, not any.

That little ditty is my pitch for wild rabbits as a role model for our times, because they symbolize the four powers we all need right now. Good luck to get through the storms. Abundance to meet our needs, one way or another. Joy in love and pleasure. Resilience to take the blows and never back down because, dammit, these are our streets.

I think, for most people, spring is a cutesy-pootsy season of flowers and baby animals, but I see it differently.

To me, spring is a time when the new forcibly replaces the old, dead, and rotten. Spring brings out the big passions and changes everything, ready or not. It’s births and beginnings. It’s melting and mess. It’s bright colors and clean green shoots pushing through the mud. It’s migrating birds, emerging bees, and for me, it’s the rabbits.

The old rabbits of winter, scarred, skinny, and strong. The new rabbits like delicate treasures nested in our flower beds.

Rabbits making the first of many babies. Rabbits dodging a thousand dangers. Rabbits robbing our gardens, lounging in the sun, grooming their tiny little faces with their tiny little paws (omg). Rabbits waging war all over town to claim and defend their territories, be they lush parks or weedy train yards.

If I have my way, it’ll be all lush parks and gardens, because where the rabbits thrive, so can we.

-Jen

Note: This post contains 407 words, which according to western numerology, reduces to 11 and then to 2. In tarot, 11 is the number of Justice in some systems and Strength in others, and 2 is the number of The High Priestess. Justice, Strength, and Wisdom.

Finding Magic: a winter small works series

Jen

How to stay hopeful when it all gets to be just too much seems to be the question of the day, at least among the Youtubers and pundits I follow. How to weather the slings and arrows, pick yourself up and dust yourself off, and all that.

Well, honestly, I’ve always been too bloody-minded to lose hope for very long. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had plenty of dark nights, but I get too angry at the effrontery of upstarts to meekly accept whatever they want my fate to be. To me, hope has never been the thing with feathers fluttering in the deep recesses of the heart. Rather, it’s the thing that spits out a bloody tooth and wades back into the fight for another round.

Life has been a real fight lately, hasn’t it? We’ve all been well and truly in it, and there’s no end in sight. Here at the house attached to the studio, we’ve been dealing with medical crises and all the attendant crises that come along with needing urgent help. Don’t worry, it’s working out. Life was saved. Sickness was cured. Needed work is being done. But this past month has been scary and exhausting and expensive, recovery and caring are not yet finished, and neglected work, home, garden, etc., knocked into the proverbial cocked hat by personal disaster, are demanding to get back on the agenda. Time is ready to march on even if I’m not.

So, when all has fallen into confusion, when I’m hopelessly behind on every task, exhausted to the point that I can’t even sleep, and the 10,000 things rush to fill every hour of the day, I open my eyes and look for the patterns in the chaos. This is what I call magic. To find the hidden structures that reveal the sense of it all. Thus I orient myself, ground and center myself, and gradually regain control of my reality.

Art and storytelling are my arcane methods for that.

I cast spells to shine clear lights on dark things, draw boundaries, invoke powers, steer and shape energies, and explore mysteries – until I feel pulled together enough to stand stably on my feet again.

And this year, because we’re all really going through it, I’m sharing my magical explorations with all of you. From now through at least New Year – maybe to spring, I’ll see how it goes – I present “Finding Magic,” a small works series celebrating the winter months of 2025-2026.

Talismans and amulets, tiny things to accent a threshold or guard a book. Symbols of power, resilience, prosperity, emotions. Worlds in the palm of your hand. Portals to other realms. Small wishes to bring good things into challenging times.

In the northern hemisphere, where I live, winter is the season for new beginnings, containing as it does not one but four new years – the solar new year of the winter solstice, the astronomical new year at the close of the calendar, the planetary new year at Earth’s perihelion, and the lunar new year in February. It’s a season for resting and resetting, for looking back and ahead, for personal transformations, for the quiet inner work of healing and growth.

With “Finding Magic,” I invite you to come along with me as I do that work for myself and offer what I find to you.

There seems to be a trend – or I’d like there to be a trend – of artists celebrating the end of the year with affordable small works series to tell the story of the year that was. “Finding Magic” is about pulling ourselves together to wade back into the fight next year, stronger, refreshed, clear-eyed, and empowered.

It will be all small items in various media, priced for any budget at under $50 and under $100 depending on the piece. Follow this site for updates as new pieces are finished.

Jen Fries, Eye Amulets, pastel, watercolor, and ink on paper, roughly life-sized, $25 each, part of “Finding Magic.” Display, carry, use for ornament, journaling, or to ward off unwelcome pests and gossips. Email me if interested.

And if you happen to be in the Boston, Massachusetts, area this weekend, stop by the Brickbottom building in Somerville for our Open Studios event, November 22-23, 12-6pm. Info here. I’ll be in Unit C322, showing the first of the “Finding Magic” pieces along with larger works on similar themes.