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Jen G

@jeng-art.bsky.social

Visual artist focusing on contexts and connections. Comfort the disturbed Disturb the comfortable 🚫AI 🚫NFT 🚫Bots 💛Weird human stuff💛 she/her

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Jen G@jeng-art.bsky.social · last mo.

American Goldfinch, gouache on paper. Detail of a larger work in progress, about the flight path of this beautiful bird. Yellow is my favorite color, Donna Tartt wrote good book of the same name, they love to eat the seeds in my garden.

Goldfinch, detail of a larger work in progress. Goldfinch in process, pencil sketch, black areas painted. Goldfinch pencil sketch
Jen G@jeng-art.bsky.social · 4mo ago

“School” currently showing at Mainframe Studios, Nostalgia exhibit. Thank you to Blue Sky fans, who liked my initial concept for this, I posted it here first.

Artist standing next to the artwork on exhibit. My abstract painting framed in the seat of a vintage child’s chair, hanging in the atrium at Mainframe Studios with other artworks.
Jen G@jeng-art.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I officially regret doing this to myself. 30 - 16”x 20” lino block handmade prints. This afternoon my partner asked how long it would take to print them. I said, “If it goes well, 3 hours. But it’s a new press, new lino block and new ink so it could take 8 hours.

Multiple prints hanging on a drying line in my studio.
Jen G@jeng-art.bsky.social · 5mo ago

An Artist’s Insanity It starts with the concept- too ambitious (this lino block is 16”x20”) with little concept of how long it will take. If someone tries to reality check me, I get stubborn, ‘I’ll show you, faithless Debbie downer!’ Then it becomes an obsession.

Lino block with T-Rex riding a tricycle while a girl playfully attacks him. The initial print of the lino block, like a rough draft so I can fine tune the block.
Jen G@jeng-art.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Sketching at the Des Moines Art Center yesterday; the bronze, “Water Woman” by Wangechi Mutu. Taking the time to sketch another artist’s work makes me appreciate it more, like crawling into their head while they were creating it.

A sketch of the Water Woman sculpture in pencil on paper, held up in front of the sculpture. Sketch out of focus in the foreground, focused on the sculpture in the background. Wangechi Mutu, Kenyan, active United States, born 1972 WATER WOMAN 2017 Bronze Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc., 2017.25 Mutu's Water Woman is a stylized, black bronze sculpture of a nguva, a water-woman of East African folklore that blends human characteristics with those of the dugong, an endangered relative of the manatee. The artist has said the nguva represents a "bewitching female aquatic being with powers to entrance and drown susceptible mortals." In contrast to the Western iconography, rooted in Hellenic, Nordic, and AngloSaxon traditions, of silken-haired women with pale skin, here, the siren is represented by a luminous, charcoal-colored female body that centers African mythology and storytelling.
Jen G@jeng-art.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Lino block printmaking in process, 16”x20”. Transferred the design to the linoleum with pencil on transfer paper. Colored the lino with red ink I got on clearance. Found out why it was on clearance- it doesn’t dry! Every time I work on it, I look like a slaughterhouse worker.

A mirror image of a t-Rex riding a tricycle, right side on white paper, left on red linoleum. A side view of the same art process, focused on the T-Rex head. Some parts have been carved out, they show up as white. A lot more work to go!
Jen G@jeng-art.bsky.social · 6mo ago

To varnish or not to varnish? Trying an out a new one on this study because my newest work was accepted to a show, which I’m excited about. But the artwork is a celebration of trans lives and I’m afraid it could be vandalized. The varnish would be a barrier layer and intensify the colors.

Jen G@jeng-art.bsky.social · 7mo ago

General by William Kentridge 1993 but so fitting today I am sick about what is happening in so many places in the world. As a white American, I’m embarrassed. Being around good art helps my soul. “Studio practice cannot be divorced from political realities.”

A painting by William Kentridge, with background colors of yellow and red, black image of a bald general with glasses and lots of medals. General 1993 (published 1998) Drypoint, hand-coloring on handmade paper Museum purchase with funds from Shawn Zeitz and Emily Gatsby, and the Print and Drawing Study Club, 2001.4 William Kentridge South African, 1955- Kentridge's portrait harnesses the frantic anxiety of scribbled lines to explore relationships between race, gender, and colonial trauma. The swollen jowls, suggesting gluttonous greed, and the vapid antipathy in the subject's gaze are reminiscent of Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, who led the genocide of 1904-7 in German South West Africa. -CKG Kentridge, a storyteller, portrays white authority as a kind of Humpty Dumpty: a big-headed caricature on the verge of collapse. Created in 1993 amid South Africa's waning white rule and police brutality, the work reflects Kentridge's view that his studio practice cannot be divorced from political realities. - DKNKentridge, a storyteller, portrays white authority as a kind of Humpty Dumpty: a big-headed caricature on the verge of collapse. Created in 1993 amid South Africa's waning white rule and police brutality, the work reflects Kentridge's view that his studio practice cannot be divorced from political realities. -DKN