Artist's Statement



I'm not really sure just how I do what I do as I create. As I write or sculpt or paint, play an instrument or sing, I disappear, becoming whatever it is that is being creatively born. It is only in a sort of shimmering aftermath that I realize I have been absent, and like a whale emerging from the depths suddenly 'I am' once more.
I am sitting in a room. There is a window beside me, softened at its edges by curtains, and a breeze pulls through. There is a floor beneath my feet. Where have I been?

Then I look and see that the paper beneath my hands is no longer blank, or the room resonates with the music that has flown forth from the guitar I am holding. Words have crowded onto the page of my notebook like a gathering of gleeful old friends. Something I cannot fully explain, whose origins are a complete mystery, exists, where before it did not.


While I do not know how I do what I do, I deeply know why. Much of the world is in pain, and those of us in it feel, in various ways, the dissonance, as the pain reverberates through. Something is wrong with the way we regard the Earth. Something is broken as we treat each other so poorly, as we stagnate in hate, and as we are absorbed by fear. Something needs to change, as we are so bad to ourselves, as we succumb to doubt, isolation and anger.

As I disappear, I think I must be seeking a solution to some of these challenges, issues, and difficulties. What I bring back with me, in words or images or music, responds to the friction, loneliness, misunderstanding and hurt in the world. It questions the way things are, and suggests kindness, symbiosis, awareness and playfulness. It acknowledges what we may lose if we cannot change from our present course, but never fully deviates from the joy and brightness that is still possible.


- Jorie Jenkins



Monday, June 13, 2016

Phases of Creation : Blackbard




The evolution of a character can go in several directions - they might be words on paper for a long time, existing solely in poetry, lyric or narrative and having no real physical manifestation in sketch or sculpture. At times, however, a character will wander through my thoughts and ideas quite clearly from the very beginning, and show up in various forms. While Blackbard the Feathabee was the first character to clearly appear to me (as shown in the uppermost watercolor painting) even he went through various stages of being. 

Blackbard says that human beings, as they are, are difficult to represent, and their ways are even more difficult to understand. His role in the narratives of Nature is integral, and at times very dark, as his motivations in the tales have been affected negatively by the dark acts of Man. But ultimately Blackbard is a strong Earth ambassador, a powerful voice hoping to inspire change.


The full-sized sculpted version of him (above) was a favorite project some years ago. He rode with me in the passenger seat of my moving van as I drove from Ann Arbor to Chicago, in preparation to jettison west to a life in Oregon; traveling with an intense, well-dressed bird man will draw some surprised and quizzical looks, but he is a traveler by nature, after all...

Blackbard currently lives with my parents in suburban Illinois, and enjoys talking to the crows. 

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