My Favorite Artists: Part 1

 

I made this video recently about a few of my favorite artists. There are a lot of them, so I had to split it into two parts. I haven't finished the second part yet. This project took so much longer than I thought it would. I started out thinking that it would be a quick way to make a video because I don't have that much to share about my own art at the moment, but then I realized that it was going to take a long time. 

I really enjoyed sharing about each artist and how I met them or learned about them and why I felt drawn to them. I also realized that I had much more to say about every artist than I had time to say unless I wanted the video to be ridiculously long. But it gave me the idea, that maybe I will make some videos that are just about one artist and I can talk a little more about them and my relationship with them and what I love about them. 

                                                             Here are the ones in the first video:

                                                                             Kelcey Loomer

https://www.kelceyloomer.com/

Kelcey and I met in 2018 about 6 months or so before I left for New Mexico. She had heard that I was planning to move to New Mexico and so she asked me if she could move into my studio when I moved out. It’s sometimes hard to find a studio in the River Arts District in Asheville and then tend to go to people who already have a connection with someone in the building. I was still not completly sure that I wanted to move to New Mexico actually, but I was struggling to pay my studio rent at the time so I asked her if she wanted to share the space with me. She agreed and it worked out really smoothly because there was a loft in the studio and Kelcey ended up using that as her space so I was able to keep using the space I was already used to using. When I moved out to move to New Mexico, Kelcey took it over and it felt like a really perfect and easy transition. 

Elizabeth Porritt Carrington

https://www.elizabethcarringtonart.com/

Elizabeth Porritt Carrington paints beautiful landscapes and forests and flowers and nature scenes. Elizabeth had a studio in the Phil Mechanics Building when I first arrived back from having gone to art school at the Burren College of Art on the west coast of Ireland in 2016. The Burren College of Art is in county Clare. And Elizabeth grew up in County Clare and her sister went to the burren college of art. The burren college of art is a very tiny school in a very quiet rural area in ireland. Not many Irish people know about it because it’s a private school and they get to go to school for free as EU citizens, so they don’t often choose to go there. So it was very synchronistic that Elizabeth even knew about it, let alone, was from there, especially right after I got back. It was crazy. There was also another synchronicity that we had. In 2014, I had a studio in a place called The Dry Goods Shop. It was a shared studio space and storefront for textile artists. Elizabeth brought in a button down shirt that had belonged to her dad, who had passed away. she wanted to have turned into a woman’s blouse that she could wear. I was making skirts and dresses at that time. I wasn’t there when she brought in the shirt, but the other women in the studios asked me later if I wanted to take on the project. I said yes, and made the blouse and then when Elizabeth came to pick it up I wasn’t there again, so I actually never met her during that time. Later on, when I got back from ireland and moved into a studio right next to hers, we made the connection. 

Jacquline Maloney

https://www.jacquelinemaloneyart.com/

I first learned about Jacqueline Maloney in 2015 because I got matched with an herbalist through the Blue Ridge School of herbal medicine to help me with a chronic cough that I had. There was a little herbal shop that I was directed to go to to pick up my tinctures and teas. I first saw Jacquie’s art there. It was a series of just these simple but beautiful works on paper that were up on the walls. I was so mesmerized. So I looked her up and started following her blog. Then when I was out in Ireland at art school, I found myself turned off by the overly intellectualized art that I was being pressured to make and I went to Jacquie’s blog for encouragement and inspiration. I felt so flooded with nourishment from reading her blog that I printed it out and taped it to the inside of the bathroom stalls at the school. Then when I returned from Ireland, I posted on Facebook that I was looking for a studio mate and Jacquie responded. So we connected and shared a studio in the Phil mechanics building for a little while until another another studio opened up next door to us and I decided I wanted to have my own space. but then we were neighbors. 

Chelsea Call

https://www.chelseacall.com/

painting I made of Chelsea

Chelsea is one of those people who just seems to be all over the place creatively. In a good way. I first met her in 2019 when I moved to New Mexico to go to art therapy school. A former student from the school was organizing a production of the Vagina Monologues and everyone involved in it was students or staff from the school. Chelsea and I were both involved. Chelsea had just graduated and I was just starting. Right away I noticed Chelsea because of the way she carries herself and dresses and her aesthetic, no matter what she’s up to is always beautiful. Later, I saw that she was facilitating art therapy groups at meow wolf, I went. Then I saw that she was running an online women’s group. I joined. She was also participating in these little pop up shops where she had these small beautiful collages that she was selling. Next, she was making beautiful pottery, then she was teaching pottery classes as a form of art therapy called “clay as care”, then she was involved in the dye garden at a local farm and making naturally dyed textile art, then she was painting beautiful medicinal plants, complete with information about them on the painting, and there was a show. Then she was doing an artist residency at the burren college of art, where I went to school. All this while organizing activism work in creative ways and running a thriving business as an art therapist in her own private practice. Some people, I just don’t know how they do it. Chelsea’s one of those people. I once ran into her on a hike in the woods with her dog and she looked perfect. I wonder sometimes, is this person real???? 

Nellie Rose Textiles

https://www.nellierosetextiles.com/aboutnellie

Nellie is one of my favorite human beings on the planet. She is so full of friendliness and joy and playfulness. I met Nellie when I had a show in a little gallery called the Bloom gallery in Thomas, WV in 2018. I somehow saw her instagram feed before I ever went out there and I felt like we were already friends. As soon as I met her I felt close to her. She has a huge beautiful studio in downtown Thomas that also doubles as her adorable home, but it’s hard to tell where home ends and studio begins, it’s all sort of mixed together in a really beautiful way. She also opened a storefront, which I was so glad to have gotten to see when I went to pick up my paintings, finally, in 2022. Nellie is a painter, a clothing designer, and a roller skater. Nellie paints on large pieces of fabric and then uses that fabric to make beautiful, fun, playful clothes. She is also a muralist and painted a beautiful huge mural in downtown Thomas. I love you Nellie. Thank you for your creativity and your fun playful spirit. 

Amy Sherald

https://www.instagram.com/asherald/

Amy Sherald is someone most people will have heard about. She is world famous and she painted Michelle Obama’s official presidential portrait. I learned about Amy Sherald in 2017 because she had done a talk with Creative Mornings, which I listened to online. Her talk was about how she had taught art classes in a prison to the inmates. She shared about that in such a genuine, compassionate, nonjudgmental way and I was really drawn to her as a person. I recognized in her a natural healer. I started following her and learning more about her story. And I also got to see a show of hers in L.A. in 2021. I read somewhere that she said she was finally experiencing what she had prayed so hard for all those years ago. I always notice when someone talks about prayer, especially an artist. I wondered, what exactly she had prayed for. Recently, I read another article where she talks about prayer, Only this time, there was a slightly different tone to it. She said that success has had it’s own baggage, which I can imagine and I had also sort of wondered about that for her because I don’t think that the art scene at that level in America is a very friendly place to be. She said “I feel like I’m on survival mode, It’s like, wait a minute, is this what I asked for? Is this my life? Is this what I wanted when I was like, ‘God, please let me be successful?’” 

Obviously, she is always free to pray for something else, or for a change, or for more peace. And I hope she finds that. I’m glad she’s in the world though and creating her beautiful art. 

Pauline Bewick

https://paulinebewick.ie/

photo I took in Dublin at a Pauline Bewick show

Pauline Bewick is a famous Irish artist, although she is probably more well known in Ireland and Europe. I first saw Pauline Bewick’s work by accident when I was in Dublin with my school, the Burren College of Art in 2015. We were taking a class trip to Dublin and went to all kinds of fancy galleries and museums, but during my free time, I just wandered around by myself and ended up finding this giant solo show of decades of her work in a smallish gallery. It was like walking into a candy store. I love how she uses mixed media and will glue lace and textiles and sometimes wood chips onto her watercolor paintings. There were pieces in this show that she had made when she was a child. And it was all originals. I don’t know how I got so lucky. Maybe it’s a permanent exhibition, I’m not sure. But I’m so glad I found it. I looked her up afterwards and read a little bit about her life. I read that she spent time in Samoa making art. There is a quote that I found in one of her journals that I’d like to share. I copied it into my sketchbook while I was in Ireland. I think we could learn a lot from it in our weird, dysfunctional, patriarchal, abusive, American/western culture. She writes, 

“Dr Gregori said, ‘the samoan fales remained the same from the olden days. In those days there were no taboos about dress or sex. Not until John Williams changed things. He made people cover their bodies and feel guilty and made sex taboo. This shame I believe caused psychological problems. In the past a child sees everything, birth, death, and sex. They watched mothers give birth in their open fales, today they don’t know how the process comes about.”

Nic Palmer

https://www.nicpalmer.com/

Nicci is a friend of mine from the Burren College of Art. She is an Australian artist. She was in her first year of her MFA program when I arrived in Ireland. She was painting huge paintings of David Bowe when I first met her, and then she went home for Christmas break and when she came back she had this amazing burst of uninhibited creativity and was just churning out sketch after sketch of the most startlingly creative images. I had a studio right across from hers during this time and I remember being a bit jealous. Okay, I was a lot jealous. She was just absolutely on fire. She is now working as an artist in Australia and she creates paintings of animals inspired by the Australian wildlife and farm life but the animals have human bodies. I did a photoshoot of her before we parted ways and then painted her portrait when I got back to Appalachia. And here is a sketch I made of her in my sketchbook while we were in school together. 

Amber Jensen

http://www.ambermjensen.com/

photo I took of amber in her studio

Amber is an incredible and very successful artist. And when I think of her, I have this feeling like she’s a famous person that I used to know. She was already very successful when I met her though. I met Amber in 2016 right away when I got back from going to art school in Ireland. I was looking for a studio and the first one I found was in the Marshal High Studios in Marshal, North Carolina. It’s an old high school on an island in the middle of the French broad river that has been converted into art studios. I shared a studio with another artist in that building for about a month and a half and during that time I got to be part of the fun, creative community of the marshal high studios. There is a back porch on the building and they would all have pot luck dinners together once a week. It was such a fun vibe. That’s where I first met Amber. I remember her telling me very unpretentiously that she made backpacks. She did other things too, she said, but, backpacks, were her bread and butter. Backpacks? I thought. I pictured like a boring grey normal backpack.  And then I got to go into her studio for the first time and I became completely obsessed with her. I remember going back to my studio and telling my studio mate, “have you seen amber’s studio!!” I was swooning. I had the immense privilege of becoming amber’s friend and hanging out with her in her studio for that month and a half while I had a studio there in the marshal high studios before I moved to the Phil mechanics building. There was a studio that opened up in the marshal high studios that I looked at and considered moving into before I made the move to the Phil mechanics building and I often wonder what life would be like if I had decided to move into that studio instead of the Phil. It’s one of those sliding door questions for me. It would have been a very different experience and I would have made different paintings of different people. Who knows. Amber had a big presence in Marshal for a long time and then a couple of years ago she moved back to her home town in Minnesota. When I was hanging out with Amber back in 2016, she was just starting to incorporate her paintings into her business. She told me she had crunched the numbers and figured out that she could allow herself the space and time to focus more on her paintings because she really wanted that to be part of her business. It was amazing to watch that emerge and to see how seemingly seamlessly she did that. Soon afterwards, she was on the cover of a popular art magazine with her painting, and I heard her say that she was glad that they showed a picture of her painting rather than her backpacks because she felt she had officially incorporated that into her business. 

Rebecca Rebouché

https://www.rebeccarebouche.com/

screenshot from the Anthropologie video where I first learned about Rebecca Rebouché

I used to be obsessed with Anthropologie, the women’s clothing store. I still am, but I don’t constantly look at their website and catalogues as often as I used to. Back in 2012, when I was still doing that on a regular basis, they posted on their website a gorgeous, mesmerizing video featuring this beautiful mesmerizing artist, named Rebecca Rebouche. I have been following her and keeping track of what she’s up to ever since. Before I had an instagram account, I used to regularly visit her blog to see what inspiring thing she had posted. What I loved about her blog was that she didn’t seem like she was ever trying to be overly professional, she was just real. She was completely her uninhibited self. That really influenced me a lot actually. I felt a sigh of relief, because I’ve never been good at being “professional”. And I love it when I feel like I’m being given permission to just be myself. I also noticed that she had this very spiritual presence that I was really drawn to. I specifically remember a blog post that really spoke to me where she talked about how the things we want, want to come to us. And her own life was an example of that. I watched as her art evolved over the years, from simple paintings of balloons and ice cream cones, to elaborate, sophisticated, whimsical, imaginative paintings of flora and fauna. 

When I was in art therapy school, I was in a class called research methods, which actually influenced me deeply because there was a lot of freedom in it regarding what we chose to research. Also, the teacher had a tangible spiritual life, which was infused into the way she taught the class. For one of my research projects, I chose the subject of my research to be putting myself out there more and experimenting with opening my heart and having a voice in ways that I have been shy to, specifically sharing about the abuse I experienced in my childhood. I posted something on instagram about how I wanted to incorporate sharing about abuse into how I share myself as an artist, and I mentioned Rebecca retouched in it because of how I think that being an artist and sharing our art is also about sharing our whole selves and Rebecca is someone who does that and I really love that about her and she’s such a cool person. After I posted that on instagram, I received an instagram message from Rebecca! Someone had watched my video and sent it to her and she had reached out to me telling me that she saw it and that I was beautiful. I was so star struck. I didn’t know how to respond. I felt so shy. Since then I occasionally respond to her always inspiring newsletters and occasionally she writes me back with an incredibly heartfelt, unusually authentic message. Rebecca is just one of those people, I think who is just fully and completely herself. She puts her whole self out there without hesitation or holding back. she’s a kind, genuine, whole-hearted kind of person. I look up to her so much.