One of the reasons I make block prints is because I often fantasize about what it would be like to be able to live a million different lives, or know the outcome of a million different choices. In Sylvia Plath’s, The Bell Jar, she writes about sitting in a metaphoric fig tree. She reaches out to grab a fig but cannot choose: one fig promises a life as a successful writer, another a husband and kids. Another fig would make her a world-famous athlete, and another offered a jet-setting life spent traveling the globe. Choosing one fig meant that the rest would wither and fall, and she found herself paralyzed as she let each one rot away, unable to decide. To me, she’s summed up the ennui of life perfectly.
In printmaking, though, I don’t have to choose. I design and carve out an image, then have the ability to repeat it until the stamp itself crumbles. That image lives a hundred different lives without giving up anything. Once the ink and paint dries, I lay them all out side by side and see the myriad incarnations. It is satisfying to not have to choose just one fig.
Without much conscious effort, I tend to gravitate towards every art medium and technique, and, frenzied, I like to combine different mediums together in both subtle and blatant ways to create hybrid, mixed-media art. I draw inspiration mostly from nature, constantly absorbing the sounds, smells, colors and shapes and attempting to re-create them in obvious and abstract forms. I acknowledge an innate interconnectedness of all living things- no matter how different, we all stem from the same place and are made of the same things. I attempt to manifest this notion by imbuing the characters in my work, both flora and fauna, with spirit and personality, showing a side of wildlife humans can relate to, something they can seem in themselves.
Stephanie Jackson currently resides in West Michigan, and holds a B.A.A. in Art (3-D Concentration) with minors in Museum Studies and Art History from Central Michigan University.
In printmaking, though, I don’t have to choose. I design and carve out an image, then have the ability to repeat it until the stamp itself crumbles. That image lives a hundred different lives without giving up anything. Once the ink and paint dries, I lay them all out side by side and see the myriad incarnations. It is satisfying to not have to choose just one fig.
Without much conscious effort, I tend to gravitate towards every art medium and technique, and, frenzied, I like to combine different mediums together in both subtle and blatant ways to create hybrid, mixed-media art. I draw inspiration mostly from nature, constantly absorbing the sounds, smells, colors and shapes and attempting to re-create them in obvious and abstract forms. I acknowledge an innate interconnectedness of all living things- no matter how different, we all stem from the same place and are made of the same things. I attempt to manifest this notion by imbuing the characters in my work, both flora and fauna, with spirit and personality, showing a side of wildlife humans can relate to, something they can seem in themselves.
Stephanie Jackson currently resides in West Michigan, and holds a B.A.A. in Art (3-D Concentration) with minors in Museum Studies and Art History from Central Michigan University.