I've decided to keep my updates on my Instagram feed for now. For current news about what I'm up to, please follow me on Instagram. Thanks and see you there!  

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​Another kelp study with gold leaf. This one exclusively 23ct gold leaf and encaustic. 

​I keep using the same title over and over but I'm ok with that. Here is another one from the Gold Show on display during December at Well Street. 

​I had two pieces in the Gold Show at Well Street this month. It was such a shiny show and fun to be part of! 

​"Water is Life" 24" x 30", gouache, acrylics & gold leaf - read about my inspiration for this piece in my presentation below.

So many birds come through Alaska every year and I love watching them fly through the skies. These are a couple non-migratory flocking I was also inspired to paint. More of this style on the way because I'm in love with this process!

This time of year always catches me a bit short - wishing I could stretch the moments longer. This month I said goodbye to my little studio space with the Well Street United show, which included 5 new pieces of mine in the main gallery and open door studios for all artists. Was fun to visit with folks. I'll miss this studio, largely for the community that exists in the building but my new studio at the Annex is much larger with better ventilation. Looking forward to wintertime long studio hours!

Several other projects are in the works right now, lots of irons in the fire!

Well Street United is a show that opens First Friday in September at Well Street Art Company in Fairbanks, Alaska. The show will be hanging for the month of September but on opening night September 2, all the studio spaces that artists use in the building will be open. I'll be there in my studio with work for sale. Come say hello!

Nice article in the Homer News about the Bear exhibit I have a painting in:
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​http://homernews.com/homer-features/arts/2016-05-26/artists-inspired-by-science-in-new-pratt-exhibit
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This Saturday, there will be a kickoff event at HooDoo Brewery for American Craft Beer Week. They asked me to paint a goat, which is symbolic of this type of beer.  It will be printed on t-shirts and posters for sale, also my painting will be available for sale during the event also! Fun project with fun people!

I'm having a super fun long weekend in Corralitos, CA at Wax Works West taking a workshop with one of my favorite encaustic artists, Lisa Kairos, who is also an awesome instructor. Yay! I'm so excited and inspired! The studio here is absolutely drool-worthy too and now I NEED a metal top table.

My bear painting titled '42 Bears' is off in the mail to the Pratt Museum in Homer. It's for an exhibit called 'Bears' that will be up this summer and is an art-science collaborative effort. I was inspired by a population density  study published in 2013 that concluded that there was around 42 brown bears (various ages) per 1000 square kilometers (about 9 square miles) on the Kenai Peninsula. Population density studies are used for game management. That's a whole lot of bears in one place! In the painting, there are 42 bears on top of maps of the area.  I hope to get down to Homer this summer to see the exhibit! And maybe a bear or two. :-) 

Heading up to the Brook's Range for a week long trip for some skiing and relaxation. Hoping to get lots of sketching done for my next project! And to catch up on sleep too! 

March is my month at Well Street and I had the whole lower gallery. I ended up with 42 pieces total and at 4 or 5 themes. The Watercolor Society was in the other half of the gallery and they counted over 500 people who came to First Friday - it was a busy night! 

I seem to be restless in my quest for easy and fast webspace! I'm moving all my content here to this new host, which will take some time. As I do, I'll be updating content and moving old posts over, putting titles on things, etc. 

Thanks!
Jennifer ​

The microbe-related study is going well although I have neglected my petri dishes so long that they dried out and created these gorgeous patterns! 

The Fairbanks Symphony asked if I would be part of their painted violin project fundraiser this year.  I love old Russian fairytales so I decided to illustrate a couple moments from  Rimsky-Korsakov's Tsar Saltan: 
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‘Interlude’ was inspired by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s operatic telling of the The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of his Son the Renowned and Mighty Bogatyr Prince Gvidon Saltanovich and of the Beautiful Princess-Swan. At one point in the story, Prince Gvidon is turned into a bumblebee by the Princess Swan so he can stow away on a ship to find his father. It is this moment I chose to paint, as it is a high-energy piece that seemed very visually compelling to me. I also imagine that it would be a challenging high-energy piece to play on violin. The flowers are in the stylized method of Russian floral painting I have seen in Russian fairy tales. Gold leaf was used to suggest royalty.

I'm so excited and honored that my work will be part of the show, 'Living Alaska: A Decade of Collecting Contemporary Art for Alaska Museums', for the next couple months at the Anchorage Museum!  The Alaska Dispatch wrote a nice review of the show here.
I've been working on more landscapes lately in preparation for my show in March 2016 and am pretty excited to get out in the field to collect more views of the Alaskan landscape I love so dear.

These were a few cute critters that went to the Bear Gallery for a second Limited smalls show.