Art and Experience

Today, October 15. I decided to write a post about my Art Experience and some recent shows. For anyone new to this blog or who hasn't known me for very long, I was a teacher for my adult work life. And I have been an artist all my life. First I taught high shool English after graduating from Glassboro State College, then I took a second college degree at Rutgers and taught Art in a grade school, and finally, after some years teaching in the Saturday Lab School at the University of the Arts, I took my Masters in the Art of Teaching and became an adjunct professor in the graduate program there. When I retired and my daughter had grown and gotten a career of her own, I had the time and energy to devote myself to painting. Through all the rest of the years, I did art work whenever I could get the time and I did a lot of wood but printing and drawing. As I got older and arthritis set in my hands, I switched to acrylic painting. I had done a lot of oil painting in my graduate art program but I wanted to move away from the solvents.

Fortunately, I discovered The Station Art Gallery and Cafe in Merchantville, the town where I had gone to High School. They have a running program of classes and group art shows through their Eiland Arts Center and I was delighted when I began to enter my work and was accepted for their shows. I have been showing my work there for about 10 years. During that time, for the last five years I also entered work in the annual Haddon Fortnightly March Women's History exhibition called Through A Woman's Eyes and I have won two prizes there. This year for the first time, I entered work in the Camden County Art and Cultural Heritage Show and won an Honorable Mention and also had work in the Croft Farm Spring into the Arts Show. In a week, I will be entering three photographs in their annual photography juried exhibition.

My major at Rutgers was printmaking, but I turned to painting because it is much easier than accessing a printing press, or, as I said before, woodcut printing which gets hard on the hands over time. Two prizes I have won were in works including fabric. For the celebration of 100 years of Suffrage, I did a panel of five fabric "handbags" each having a "page" of fabric with a small painted portrait of a woman in a particular field. One bag was women in sports, with Billy Jean King in front, another Woen in the Arts, with Judy Chicago on the cover, and another on Writing with Rachel Carson on the Cover. That piece of 20 "pages" won the first prize in the show. >p/> A show this Spring about which I was very happy was the Fundraiser for Fishtails Animal Rescue. Dozens of artists contributed 6 x 6 inch paintings of anomals, each one selling for $50 which went directly to the animal rescue. I contributed 7 paintings and 4 of them sold. I have cats and a dog and it made me very happy to do this charity event for a shelter and rescue group.

My latest fabric work was for the Haddon Fortnightly Show and it was a cork board with "Pennants" in blue felt with a "medallion" on each that depicted a "Modern Woman" of some fame and xuccess. It has been the joy and accomplishment of my retirent to follow half a dozen years of volunteer work at various Historic Sites such as Red Bank Battlefield, with this flourishing career in local art shows. I have met many wonderful people and enjoyed sharing my work and seeing the work of others Also during this time, I was able to get Friends from Woodbury Meeting to help me turn an empty area in an adjacent building into a small Art Gallery where two other Friends and I have held a couple of Art Shows. Our gallery is called The Friendship Gallery. We hope to do more with this site in the future.

I hope you feel inspired to do your art whether it is woodworking, stained glass, painting, quilting or whatever your media of choice, and that you, too, find a way to share that work with others! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com