Tag: Collage

YART – Annual arts showcase, yard sale, and social event – Saturday!

Jen

So, I’m participating in a city-wide arts event, organized by the Somerville Arts Council, amusingly called YART Sale. (See what they did there? It’s a yard sale, but it’s art, so it’s … yeah, you get it.)

Today is Thursday, 8/10. The YART Sale event is Saturday, 8/12.
(Rain date 8/13.)

This is called Advance Notice!

In my defense, or at least deflection, Somerville only published the interactive online map of all the participants yesterday. We’re a last-minute, seat-of-the-pants kinda town here. It’s how we roll.

Here is the link to the online map: YART Map. And here is the link to a pdf of the participants, alphabetical by something (not sure exactly what), that you can print and carry around with you if you prefer to be analog: YART Listings.

And here is the direct link to my listing on the online map:
ME at YART!

This will give you all the details in case you are in the metro Boston area and would like to stop by, see the work for real, meet the artist for real, and so forth. I’m #62 on the map and one of the 5 closest to Sullivan Square, which would make me first or last on your itinerary, depending on which end of the city you start at. I will be there the full afternoon from 12 to 6, with a short pit-stop break when I can get one.


By the way, if you are in the metro Boston area and have been longing silently for one of my artworks, this is your chance to buy it and avoid prohibitive shipping costs with in-person pick-up. If there’s a piece you especially would like to see in person, just email me at jen@jenfriesarts.com or contact me on Facebook, and I will make sure it is on the porch on the day. Or if you prefer to use a credit card, just contact me about it. If anyone buys art today or tomorrow via the Artrepreneur shop (See Shop tab, above) or by emailing me, and can pick up in person this Saturday, I will refund any shipping costs that may get charged automatically and will have the piece ready for you during the YART event. Make sure you let me know you’re picking up.

This is also a great opportunity to join my Patreon (see button below). Be among the first to join the free community, then introduce yourself on Saturday and get an embarrassing public acknowledgement from me right there on my porch! Or subscribe for $5/month and enjoy a 10% Friend of the Studio discount on any YART purchases, plus an even more embarrassing public acknowledgement.

And if you’re not buying or joining, that’s fine, too! Visit. See art. Chit-chat. We’re supposed to have nice weather this Saturday.

This is my first venture out into the YART wilds, and as usual, I’m doing it completely half-assed. But I dunno, I feel good about it. It’s the kind of casual, heck-whatever event that appeals to me, so I hope to add it to my permanent calendar.

Let’s see how it goes.

-Jen

PS: There is an extremely slight chance that a reading from Chapters 1 through not-yet-published 5 of An Alchemy of Dragons may occur, if requested. Fair Warning. – J

Summer Series: Midsummer

Jen
JFries Midsummer

Jen Fries, Midsummer, collage on paper using copies of 19th century prints.

Summer Series: The Diver

Jen

Jen Fries, The Diver, collage with artificial flowers on board, 16 x 20 inches.
Inspired by the Olympic Games.

XIX. The Sun

Jen
XIX The Sun

Another post in this year’s Summer Series postings of seasonal-themed works from my portfolio.

XIX The Sun is a new piece, currently being exhibited in the show “Carnival” at the Brickbottom Gallery.

New Abstract Landscapes

Jen

Three new abstracts I made this fall. Let’s take a walk through them.

Abstract Landscape 8

Watercolor and ink, half painting, half monotype print, 5 x 7 inches. I printed Prussian blue over a dilute Prussian wash, then incised color with a palette knife. It’s one of my more purely abstracted things, but you know me – I can’t really do abstracts. To me, this small painting suggests city lights reflected in water.

jfries-abstract-landscape-8

Abstract Landscape 9

Watercolor and ink. 9 x 12 inches. Definitely a seascape, to my eye, winter, the surf viewed through dried grasses. What do you think?

jfries-abstract-landscape-9

Abstract Landscape 10

Mixed media – watercolor, pastel, and collage, 12 x 9 inches. In this one, I altered the original abstract watercolor to pick out the image I saw in it – a pine forest, full of mist pierced by light.

jfries-abstract-landscape-10

My series of abstract landscapes get at the heart of my creative practice. They’re about following and exploring, not directing the process. They’re about finding the images that resonate most naturally with me, like a kind of Rorschach test to reveal how I see the world.

These three works will be in my shop in a couple of days.

Also coming up, Chapter 4 of An Alchemy of Dragons, and a gift for all of you, connected to a Yuletide painting in progress.

New Work: April Moon

Jen2 Comments
JFries april moon 4.22
Rabbit in moonlight
Moths dance
Returning home

This one is about the gifts the universe sends us, the treasures we pass by on the road. 

The moon was particularly beautiful over Somerville last night, when the storm clouds parted. It was bright enough to light my room, overcoming the street lamps. The wet air smelled of spring.

By the way, we call April’s moon the Pink Moon, not because it looks pink, but because it’s the month for pinks, the flower, to bloom. Indeed, my city is filling up with flowers now.

I repurposed one of my blue landscapes for this collage. Sometimes an image has more to say, and I will often revisit older pieces that seem like they want to go in a different direction. In fact, I won’t let go of a piece until I’m sure it is what it wants to be.

Happy Spring, all.

-Jen

And Sings the Tune: New Art, New Cat

Jen
JFries birds border 7.2021

I can hardly believe it has been about three months since my last update, but as most of you know, I tend to fall off the planet fairly regularly. I don’t apologize for it. When I have crap to work through that’s irrelevant to anyone else, I just do it without showing it to anyone. But finally, I do have news to share.

New work on exhibit this summer

“Sometimes the neighbors are up all night,” collage and acrylic on paper.

JFries sometimes the neighbors 6.30.2021
And sings the tune without the words…

This new work is inspired by our local wild birds, whose songs frequently echo through the streets at night, when all else is relatively quiet. I find the birds’ nightlife deeply reassuring. Even in something as small as a bird singing in the dark, we are reminded that we share a living and lively world. The collage is 7 x 10 inches, and made with copies of vintage images, bars of music randomly sliced from Stravinsky’s “The Firebird Suite,” my own blue landscape in acrylic paste, and a line from Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the Thing With Feathers.”

It’s part of the summer show at the Brickbottom Gallery, “The Great Outdoors,” running July 15 – August 14, 2021. Visit the Brickbottom website at This Link for details.

A Cat

Allow me to introduce Luna Lynx, Lady Silvertip, our new cat and studio assistant.

lunalynx 6.2021
“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.” – Jean Cocteau

She has been with us about a month and is still in studio orientation, but has taken the job of House Cat well in hand. According to the good folks at Animal Rescue League of Boston, although very young herself, she had just weaned off a litter of kittens before coming to us. I believe she has transferred her maternal instincts to her two new humans. Luna Lynx is extremely attentive, playful and nurturing. She scolds us if we wander off, makes sure we eat on time and get our exercise, and checks on us in our beds at night. 

I’m grateful because we have needed someone to take care of us these past few sad months. With her to get us up and running, I feel like we can finally start to move again and that the winter – and all of last year, really – is over at last.

Finally, watch this space for upcoming projects and a new online shop system, coming soon.

Dull November Brings the Blast

Jen1 Comment
JFries squirrel border 11.2020

Then the leaves are whirling fast…

Well, darn it. September got ahead of me. October got off the leash entirely. November has been very uncooperative. And now it’s Thanksgiving. Let’s think about what we have to be thankful for.

Fair warning: I’m going to be blunt again because, apparently, that’s my medium. Nothing herein should come as a surprise. 😉

I am deeply grateful that both my sainted mother and myself are healthy, as are my friends and family as of last report. I don’t know how the friends and family have managed it, but Mom and I have done it by draconian measures, which are not being lifted any time soon – home, distance, sanitation, masking, no exceptions ever. Life has been completely insane in the US this year, and the madness continues, I’m sorry to say. But, so far, so good at our house.

I am grateful to almost 80 million of my fellow Americans for making Joe Biden our next President – and equally to the point, Donald Trump NOT our next President – and if anyone out there wants to start muttering about recounts and lawsuits, stow it because I’m not interested. We still have to get that person physically out of the White House, of course, but we did unseat him, so we can check that off our list of things to do, at long last.

And I am grateful for the roof over our heads and the dinner that will be on our table this holiday. Food, shelter, health, and a light at the end of the Trump tunnel – I think those are blessings enough for this hellish year.

Now we are less than two months away from 2021, and I feel a combination of relief and anxiety. The results of the election were like having a crushing weight lifted off my chest. I can breathe, but four years of that tension have left me like a plate of jelly, unable to pull myself together.

I am working on some things, though. First, I’m doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), because when you’re exhausted and brain-fried, the best tonic is trying to crank out 50,000 words in a month. I’m not doing too well, but the month isn’t over so…fingers crossed? I’ll tell you all about it when it’s over. (Spoiler: It’s not going to happen, and I’m okay with that.)

Also, bats and moths are in progress because why not? I like bats and moths. This is an experiment I’ve been mulling a long time, making hard sculptures out of traditional origami. Expect to see more.

I’ve been designing dollhouses and books, putting my garden to bed between rainstorms, rethinking my approaches to social media and time management, and wandering off on artistically esoteric (or esoterically artsy) mind trips which take me far from the madding crowd and which I hope will produce work in the coming year.

But I haven’t really been, you know … productive.

Screw it. We all deserve to give ourselves a break. If 2020 isn’t an excuse for falling short of last New Year’s expectations, then I don’t know what is. I’m thankful just to have made it this far, in a depressingly literal sense. I’m taking the rest of the year off. And I’m giving you all the month of December off, too. There. That’s my gift to you. Just be alive, at home, healthy and safe, and we’ll deal with the rest in January.

In the meantime, you might see some odd posts here as I play around with styles and topics over December. Feedback is always welcome. And below, please enjoy some photos of things I’ve been doing while being unproductive.

That’s it for now. Take care, my friends. Keep well, hang on, and have a small, intimate, safe, and happy holiday with the ones closest to you.

Luna Moth

Not entirely unproductive. This new work returned from exhibition this week and will be available in the shop soon. The moth is an origami-based paper sculpture colored with acrylic paint and mounted on a collage of hand-tinted vintage images.


When not in the gallery… Luna Moth atop my desk with Call Me Ishmael, Woman Found and Studied, and random inspirational bits.

Bats and Moths!

Did I mention…

We had a snow storm in October. It didn’t last long, though.


24 hours later…

Sparkly.

Storms, Color, Summer

Jen
JFries geese border

I’ve had an unusually productive two weeks since launching my newsletter. The thing must be magic! Here are some of the highlights, including a new work for another upcoming exhibition.

I’m going to be binding some new journals and re-binding some older books, so I made a selection of paste papers for them, which led to me playing around with the paste paint. That resulted in some not too bad monochromatic landscapes, which then led to shades of the color blue scrolling through my mind. A certain dusky shade of blue-gray struck me as perfect for a collage that had been simmering in my mind for some time, so I set about inventing the color with layers of paint and dyed tissue paper. The resulting collage of geese flying across the moon will be shown with the Brickbottom Artists Association summer exhibition, which just happens to be on the theme of “BLUE.” That will be shown online from mid-July. See the Home page for details.

I finished an additional collage today – The Death of Orpheus – but I did it on paper so I could experiment with a new pasting technique to prevent warping. Fingers crossed on that one. Two more collages on canvas are in the works, inspired by views from my studio window – one a particularly spectacular spring morning, the other a rather spectacular super moon.

Nature has been pushing me along. These past weeks have been full of moon views and thunder storms. The garden is filling up with flowers, bees, butterflies, and rabbits. My landlords’ mulberry tree, outside our kitchen window, is bent under the weight of fruit and crowded with birds and animals. And all day today, my landlords’ dogwood, outside my studio window, hosted two fledgling mockingbirds fresh out of the nest, crying for food as their parents came and went, stuffing them with mulberries.

I can’t help feeling a little allegorical. I took the lesson of these weeks from the text on the collage of the geese, adapted from a Siberian shaman’s song:

“The birds’ way of returning,
The birds’ way of leaving behind the sea,
If I lean on these ways,
I find support for my legs.”

Where are you finding support in these difficult times? Drop a comment and let me know what flashes or colors or things outside your window keep you going. If you have any questions about the works below, I’ll be happy to answer.

Also, issue #2 of the newsletter is scheduled for around July 16th. Sign up now for more updates and exclusive content.

Paste Papers

  • JFries earth tones and green paste 7.1.2020
  • JFries indigo paste 7.1.2020
  • JFries green paste 1sm 7.1.2020
  • JFries brown paste 1sm 7.1.2020
  • JFries green paste 3sm 7.1.2020
  • JFries brown paste 2sm 7.1.2020
  • JFries green paste 4sm 7.1.2020
  • JFries green paste 2sm 7.1.2020
  • JFries indigo paste 1sm 7.1.2020


Estuary Moon, part of the Mystic River Project and Cities

JFries Estuary Moon 6.30.2020


Experimental landscape

JFries indigo landscape 7.1.2020


Death of Orpheus, part of Literary Works, another experiment

JFries Orpheus 1 7.2.2020

Virtual Gallery: Construction/Deconstruction is online

Jen

The Brickbottom Artists Association exhibition, “Construction/Deconstruction,” is now up in full online. Please enjoy!

The Brickbottom Gallery here in Somerville was forced to close to the public due to the pandemic, but my fellow artists did a fantastic job establishing our first virtual gallery. Our annual spring show is extended into the summer.

Click here to view the full exhibition at www.Brickbottom.org.

My contribution, “Pink Yarrow,” reconstructs flowers from my urban garden from the dried remains of the actual plants.

JFries Pink Yarrow 4.2020