A few years ago I sorted through a giant pile of leftover stuff from high school and art school that had been sitting around my parents’ basement. I photographed nearly everything and threw out a lot of stuff- who needs a foot-high stack of bad figure drawings? But I did save a lot of my old printmaking projects because they were on nice paper and I thought I might be able to do something with them someday.

I recently found the portfolio of all that stuff stashed under my bed and finally decided to start using some of these prints to make some new collages. It’s really interesting and strange seeing stuff I made 15+ years ago (oh god has it really been that long?!). I’m the same person, and yet not. It’s also good to remind myself that I used to actually be able to draw, and enjoyed it. I hardly ever draw now and have gotten worse at it, but at least I know it’s just due to lack of practice not to innate inability. I’ve been known to take apart collages to re-use some of the parts, but this is the first time I’ve gone back to old “finished” prints and worked on top of them.

I feel surprisingly little attachment toward the idea of keeping this old stuff intact. There are old things that I would never rework like this- there are some big paintings I made in art school that still hang in places of honor in my apartment. But there’s something about printmaking, about having multiple copies of all these things that make them less precious to me.  I hate starting with a blank surface, and what better surface to start with than something from my own past? Anyone else ever revisit/rework old works? Thoughts?

Cathedral of Flight  is a unique print on handmade paper.

Someone emailed me and asked me the process. After explaining all of the steps involved and the true uniqueness of this print—I raised the price!

Anyhow, I felt like sharing with the artists collective. This print is very special to me. It is a unique one-of-a-kind print using multiple print plates and techniques:
1) The paper is handmade by me using gampi bark which I cooked, hand beat and then formed in a decal and mold.

2) The birds are solar plates from my “November Visit” series

3) The “Seed of Life” symbol is made using the pronto plate or polymer plate lithography method.

4) The “arch” is made by using a stencil or paper to block out the background while printing.

5) The background is a combination of two patterns I made, one is a random natural pattern made by applying gesso/sand to a plastic sheet, the other, more intricate pattern is one of my skeleton leaf patterns that I make, printed via the pronto-plate lithography method.
6) There is also some hand coloring.

This print was not pre-planned. I call this type of printing “free falling.” For example, after I completed my bird series “November Visit” (which entailed making two sheets of paper per print, multiple exposed solar plates to get the right exposures and tone, etc . . ) I went into the studio with paper and multiple plates and just played around—it was a blast and a memory of a day well spent.
I hope you enjoy.

Today I came across a very old painting of mine, one of the very first I believe, but it wasn’t my painting that stopped me, it was someone else’s work, mysteriously present on the back… including someone else’s hand writing….

Behold! Exhibit A:

If this was nothing more then a random doodle I would probably have not bothered thinking about it for more then a couple seconds. But, while only a sketch, whoever painted these little figures knew what they were doing, there are no mistakes, proportions are all right on, there are even hints of shading, looks like a kind of re-arrangement of some Seurat as well. I have zero memory of this whole thing. My signature is there, from 2000, upside down. I can not think of what situation would have made the back of this painting the only surface on which to make a sketch like this… or what it’s purpose was.

And then the writing on the bottom, it is not mine, it says: Sumptuous  Veg, Fruit + Flowers  In Oil    Joe Anna Arneh     I googled the name, sort of thinking I might catch the culprit, but instead got “Joe Anna Arnett”. Whoever wrote it spelled the name wrong, which is another strange twist… how does someone know this Joe Anna painter, but not know enough to spell the name properly? seemingly a well enough known artist, but not a very popular one. The only people I personally know that would have the skill to do this are painters… and I can not imagine a time or place or context in which this would have happened. Other then that, all I can think is that somehow, someone got into my stuff at some point and somehow decided to make a little sketch?

I don’t know what to think. None of the scenarios I can think of make sense. It’s possible that I’ve just forgotten whatever the story is behind this, and maybe I’ll remember at some point, or maybe it’s just a mystery.

I found the mystery painting while working out a storage/organization system for my paintings, which has been my main project lately. It’s something I’ve needed to do for some time, but since it looks very much like I will be moving to Philadelphia in a few months I’ve begun working on it in earnest. My idea is to take zero paintings with me, and so, somehow, they all have to fit into this small bedroom. I couldn’t stand back far enough to get the whole mess in the shot, but this is what I’ve got so far.

I built an extra shelf into the closet today, and I’ve got one more bookshelf to use. I’m not sure it will be enough, but I have most of it sorted. Still have about 100 or so paintings downstairs that will have to fit in somewhere… and as soon as this is done I’ll go back to making more. hah

Hello! I’m thrilled to be part of this group of artists- there’s so much inspiring work here!

My name is Jen McCleary. I live in Philadelphia with my boyfriend, two chinchillas and a somewhat insane Senegal parrot. Aside from making art, the most interesting things I do are aerial arts and flying trapeze (not that I’m particularly good at it, but it’s awesome and addictive anyway).

I studied painting and printmaking, but don’t really do either of those things much these days.  I mostly make digital photo-collages and mixed-media collages/paintings on paper. I also make jewelry from vintage/found objects, particularly optician lenses and watch parts, and also I do graphic design. I’m either suffering from a complete inability to focus on one thing, or I have an insatiable curiosity to experiment with different media and techniques. (I think I prefer the latter explanation!) I think there are some very interesting possibilities in the places where art, design, and craft overlap.

Here are some variations of a digital collage I’ve been working on over the past few days. I had been taking a break from the digital work to focus on some paper collage and ink drawing and assemblage, but I found myself drawn back into working digitally. I love how it gives me the freedom to try different things without fear of messing up hours of work (hooray for Undo!). I’m hoping to make some videos at some point of all the different stages and variations these pieces go through as I create them…

You can see more of my work and read my blog and see my Daily Photo Project (wherein I attempt to take and post one interesting photo every day) at jenmccleary.com

Tame for the Time Being features another Gilroy Cannery Painting. Check out the great looking iPhone cases on the updated Redbubble listing.

April: 17 posts by 8 members leading to 1420 views and 126 comments.

Gilroy Cannery, which is part of a series has been featured in the To dream in a dream treasury on ETSY. I also updated the Redbubble print of this and once again the iPhone cases are looking really great. I am really digging the Capsule cases.

Part of an ongoing TTV series I started last summer…

Another updated print  and iPhone case on Rebubble. I think I might have to up the frequency otherwise this little update project of mine will years in stead of weeks.

I’ve mainly been experimenting with what I’m calling altered portraits.

I have all of these close-ups that I like well enough in theory, but they aren’t achieving enough as stand-alone images, so I’m craving paint or some other surface textures.

There’s very little that’s subtle here as I’m just getting going, but it’s been a while since I’ve posted so I’ll just throw these up there and see if you have any thoughts. (Chad, I tried making these bigger but the “large” box doesn’t check, just “full size,” which is too big. They’re uploaded at 600 X 600 though if you need.)