For my newsstand I decided on a monster theme.  Monsters have become ever more prevalent in popular culture.  From children’s toys to candy to cartoons to handbags to clothing to fine art, monsters are everywhere!  In designing my newsstand I explored the theme of monsters by creating my own monsters.  I imagined that these monsters were coming out of the newsstand itself.  I painted 4 of my original monsters climbing on the newsstand and interacting with each other.  I used bright colors for my monsters to make them pop out.  I titled the piece, “It’s getting Crowded in Here”.

Sorry the images are not the best quality.  I’m still figuring out my digital camera.

Sidenote: It’s so weird to talk about college as past tense.  But it’s been almost 9 months since I graduated now.

Most of these works hold a special place in my heart.  They are the beginning of my artistic career.

“Expect the Unexpected”, 2009 acrylic on canvas

This is pretty much the first painting I ever did. (That I was willing to admit was my work).  It’s the first big painting I painted (measuring 3 by 4 feet).  My painting teachers made us paint on a large scale, which pissed me off at times, (living in a tiny apartment, I had no space to store these monsters) but was definitely crucial to my development as a painter.  This painting now hangs in the living room of my bestie, Shelly van Wyhe.  Most of my early works were gifted to friends and family.  After putting so much love into them, I just couldn’t find it in me to sell them.

“BathtubToeMonsters”, 2009 acrylic on canvas

This is possibly the first “monster” I painted.  The idea came from sitting in the tub and imagining that my feet combined with the reflection of my toes in the water is a creature.  Wiggling my toes brings it to life.  I like the extreme balance of this piece, which hangs in my mom’s living room (I would have preferred to hang it in the bathroom, but sadly my mom’s tiny bathroom does not have the wall space to accommodate a 3 by 4 foot painting).  I don’t know why, but this painting reminded my of my mom when it was finished, so I gave it to her.

“Aaron”, 2009 acrylic on canvas

This one is unfinished, and will never be completed.  I’m only putting it on here so as not to interrupt my complete portfolio.  I made this for my college boyfriend, who now has it in his possession (albeit removed from the stretcher bars).  It’s the only human portrait I’ve done.  I was working from a Photoshopped picture by Aaron.  It was interesting to work from someone else’s art.  Ultimately I think the portrait was  success, but I abhor the background.  And that may be because that’s the unfinished part.

“Where the Wooden Mushrooms Grow”, 2010 acrylic on canvas

Wow, the colors are really off on this one, sorry.   (Note to self: take a better picture of WTWMG).  The grass is greener (haha), and the water is a darker shade of blue.  I also think I added more colors into the clouds after this picture was taken.

“Where the Wooden Mushrooms Grow” is about dreams, and the point where dreams and real life blend and get confused.  “Mad River Mushroom” was a sculpture I made out of driftwood.  The day after I had finished my sculpture I had a dream so vividly real that in the dream, I mistook it for reality.  I dreamt that I swam to the place where the wooden mushrooms, that I had created, grew.  The largest mushroom leaned towards me as I swam closer, and spit a penny into the water, as a “thank you” for bringing the wooden mushrooms into existence.  This dream further solidified my idea that what you create becomes a reality.

Sidenote: I collect pennies almost obsessively, so the penny means something more than 1 cent to me.

“The Spirit Of Jessie”, 2010 acrylic on panel (diptych)

I painted this for my friend’s dad.  Jessie, his Golden Retriever had cancer, and had lost one of her legs to it at the time I painted this.  It was a sort of celebration of Jessie at her prime.  I used a tiny wallet size photograph of Jessie as a reference for the painting.  The colors in the background came from the atmospheric backdrop in the photo.  The shapes came from the wood-grain on the panel itself.  Interestingly, the shape right behind Jessie looks like a dog’s head, as if it is her spirit.  I used clear gesso on the panel, so the wood-grain would show on the finished work.  The duckie was one of Jessie’s favorite toys.  The saddest part about this painting is that Jessie died shortly after I completed it.  I know it’s not my fault, but I felt a lot of guilt about that.  Jim put this painting in his living room, and he says every time he looks at it, he misses Jessie.

“When the Shit Hit the Fan”, 2010 acrylic on canvas

I painted this whilst in the midst of a painful breakup, so that’s where the title came from.  While that has little to do with the painting itself, it explains why it looks like a crazy person made it.  During my critique, my painting teacher said that she liked the chicken scratch writing that you can barely make out, labeling all the hotdogs.  Why hotdogs?  Again, the idea for this painting came from a dream.  When my real life doesn’t interest me, I tend to pull ideas from my dreams and fantasies.  I had a dream in which I was visiting a school.  I was on a tour of the art facilities and we went into the ceramics lab (I don’t know why, I’ve never seriously worked with clay) and every single art object in the room was a hotdog.  There were hotdog statues and hotdog teapots and pretty much every variation of the hotdog as crafted in clay.  I asked the instructor, “Why hotdogs” and his reply, “The more you do something, the more it makes sense”.  For some reason I thought that was incredibly profound, and took it as a sign that I was supposed to paint hotdogs with faces…

Also, painting something incredibly ridiculous while my personal life felt equally ridiculous was somehow healing.  But I’m kind of a weird person.

“A Summery Day”, 2010 acrylic on canvas

This is my favorite painting (thus it is the image on my homepage).  “A Summery Day” stems from an actual event in my life.  My mom was having a hard time with one of her upstairs neighbors for quite a while (ironically, she’s having even more issues with her new upstairs neighbor, but that’s besides the point).  My mom is kind of a Wiccan (she doesn’t really call herself that, but she has always been interested in magic and witchcraft), so she made this sort of voodoo doll out of red cloth as a way of dealing with her anger.  Personally, I’ve always believed that hanging onto anger results in all sorts of negative energies, so I suggested we release this doll in a ceremony, as a way for her to let go of her negative feelings towards her neighbor.  So we got a balloon, and we tied the doll to it and my mom created a circle, and said some words and we let go, and watched it float away.  Something about the red of the doll, the yellow of the balloon, and the blue of the sky really stuck with me.  I wrote a poem about it, but that wasn’t enough.  So I did what I do best, and recreated the image in paint.  In the largest cloud is the poem I wrote.  It’s kind of hard to see in the picture, so here it is:

a summery day

a single yellow balloon

floats bad feelings away

I have 2 more paintings that I did in college, but I don’t have any pictures of them right now, so I’ll have to upload them later.  Thanks for looking!

These little guys are what I’ve been working on lately.  I’ve become really interested in (obsessed with, really) cute monsters.  They are EVERYWHERE in pop culture, and I find them fascinating.  These “mini-monsters” are all original ideas, but some are definitely inspired by cartoons I used to watch as a kid (“Aaah Real Monsters”) and the Ugly Doll toy monsters.  I adore them and I’ve been getting great feedback on them from family, friends, and the shoppers at the SPCA thrift store in Davis, CA.  I’m not really sure what they mean to me, yet.  I’ve been toying with the idea that these cute monsters are a way of making my fears about the future more manageable.  Monsters are typically meant to be feared, but by turning them into something cute, I am making my fears seem small, precious even.

(from the top right, they are: “Monstrosity”, “Mr. Spermy”, “Zombie Deer”, “Poppet”, “Mushroom Head”, “Ocupillar”, “Leeeroy”, “Fred”, “Blobby”, “Oblica”, “Nom Nom Nom”, “Kooki Kaki”, “Hippy the Dead Hippo”, and “Toe Monster”, all Copyright JF, 2011)

You can see them in person at the Pence Gallery, 212 D St,  Davis, CA.