How much do you share as an artist? Does the viewer want to know the artist's story behind a painting? Does that ruin or enhance the experience of looking at a painting, breathing it in? Can it still become your own? Should titles be broad and all encompassing or should they add mystery and intrigue?

"We Never Went Backpacking" could be titled "Hermit Thrush." Would you like it more? Does it influence how you see or feel about the painting?

My creative process usually starts with a title which is usually influenced by an emotion. Is that important to know?

My heart broke this past winter. My cousin died rather unexpectedly. Life isn't suppose to happen that way.

I loved Dean fully. When I think of him I hear his full bodied laugh. I hear him telling family stories loudly. I see him living on top of his mountain in Braintree, Vermont proud of his blueberries, hops, turkeys and family. As far as I am concerned all of Vermont loved Dean. It appeared every single community member in his small town, especially all his middle school students, came to hear the mourner's kaddish chanted for him. You loved Dean if you knew him. 

Dean was my twin in his love for the outdoors. Every year we talked about backpacking together. Every year it didn't happen due to jobs, kids, broken bones, mismatched schedules. But there was always next year. We knew it would happen. 

We never went backpacking.

Dean died in February. His funeral was on Valentine's Day. All of our hearts broke.

Art helps me process emotions. Art helps me express emotions. Art helps me feel. Art helps me heal. Art helps me love.

What do you want to know as the viewer? Do you want to know that the base layer of "We Never Went Backpacking" is a map of Vermont? Do you want to know that the vibrant colors were designed to communicate my deep feelings of love and loss? Do you want to know that I purposefully worked on cardboard because Dean taught me how to reuse materials? Do you want to know that I carved the Green Mountains into the cardboard to add the texture and depth that I was feeling? Do you want to know the additional textures are school letters and numbers representing Dean's love of teaching? Do you want to know the Hermit Thrush is Vermont's state bird?

How much of this information is important to share as an artist? 

I recently listened to a podcast where the artist suggested that a title should never influence the viewer's perception of a painting. The viewer should be allowed her or his own interpretation. I understand this argument. Yet I also believe it is a choice both the artist and the viewer makes.

I asked my daughter what she thought my title combined with the painting was representing. She replied, "global warming."

Perfect.

With love to all,

Jessica

​Breathe it all in. Love it all out.

I thank Mary Oliver daily for those words. They remind me to take a deep breath, listen to the sounds around me, embrace the moment, and see the beauty. 
 
I’ve contemplated a lot recently about who do I want to be as an artist? Why am I painting what I paint? Why am I teaching what I teach? Why are the arts important?
 
We are complicated beings and these are complicated questions.
 
I spent a good part of May as the Artist-in-Residence at the Glen Arbor Art Center in northern Michigan. I painted daily in a studio in a barn in a field in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. I had planned on exploring through art the marks humans have left on the lakeshore. Instead I became enraptured with birds. I am indebted to the Glen Arbor Arts Center for their advice to follow my heart and let the experience guide my painting. What a gift. 

Prior to my residency, I had been working on a show for the Peppermint Creek Theatre about homophobia and antisemitism. As I sat outside my studio and quietly watched birds, I thought about the women I had interviewed: Queer Jewish women who were willing to tell me their stories. In my studio in a barn in a field, I found myself painting birds representing these women's stories. In their words I heard strength, courage, love, and a fierce determination to be who they are in a world that doesn’t always want to accept them. Suddenly a swallow represented the woman whose home is her true north, an owl symbolized the wisdom of the two rabbis I interviewed, a hummingbird embodied the fighting spirit of these women, a loon found stillness in just being. The series is titled "Here I Am."
 
Art is about communicating, imagining, thinking, finding symbols to represent difficult subjects. It’s about honesty. It’s about growth.
 
I recently taught a workshop focused on the conceptual component of painting. With a lovely group of artists, over three days we asked: Why do you paint what you paint? Can you bare your soul in your art and still have it be universal? Do you have to bare your soul? Do you have to tell your secrets? And most importantly, what are you trying to communicate? Paintings were conceptualized to deal with aging, death, politics, love for children, feeling lonely, feeling blessed – the gamut of human emotions we all confront. Texture. Color. Images. Words.

Art plays a crucial role in transforming, redefining, reimagining our world whether on a personal, regional, or global level. 
 
We are complicated humans living in complicated times. I feel blessed to have art as an avenue to express concepts and emotions. AND I feel blessed to be able to share this with others.

​Staying Connected
 
I'm teaching a three day workshop at the upcoming International Society of Experimental Artists Symposium in Grand Rapids, MI.

Painting for Self Expression
Sept 19-21, 2019.
Register HERE
 
***
The City Pulse ran such a nice article about my Here I Am series.
How One Artist Dug Deeper
 
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I've updated my website!
Please check it out: www.jessicakovan.com

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Traveling this summer but still want to create? Try out one of my online art journaliing classes! Work at your own pace. I am always just an email away to ask questions!

As artists, we are taught to channel our feelings onto the canvas. If you want to sell your paintings, it’s safer to not talk about your politics. Hide them in your paintings, and hide them well. I paint what’s in my heart with color, texture, and words—hopefully, then, the feelings will transfer from my heart to the canvas. But I have tried this, and I am still bubbling up inside.

I was going to write about painting today. Instead I am writing about emotions.

After last week’s murders at the Tree of Life synagogue, friends reached out to me offering condolences and prayers. I didn’t react like my other Jewish friends. Their offers of prayers and thoughts added flames to my anger. They should feel the same pain I feel. We are all people. Our society, our community, is seriously dangerously messed up. We are living in a broken world. Don’t pray for me. Pray for all of us. And do more than pray, dammit. Speak up. Speak out. Be angry. Be informed. Vote.

I wonder where my anger comes from. I will continue to reflect on that. In the meantime, my heart hurts. It hurts for all of us. I feel rage for all of us. And I feel immense compassion for the families and community that have lost love ones to gun violence, racism, anti-Semitism, and fear of “the other.”

I am working on turning my anger, fear, sorrow and despair back into love. “Be gentle with yourself. Be gentle with others.” That’s what I’ve told myself in quiet moments this week.

I feel vulnerable even saying I got angry. I don’t want to offend anyone. Instead I want to just put it in my art. I will write my emotions into my paintings and then add the appropriate colors: black, white, grey and perhaps a little blue. 

​​But will that help the world?

With gentle love to all,

Jessica

This time of year is always a time of reflection for me. Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur. The Days of Awe. I find myself asking: Where is my heart? How is my heart? What have I learned over the past year? What are my intentions?

As I sat in the synagogue wrapped in the beautiful sounds of the holidays I felt wrapped in warmth. My heart was being held gently. As I mused about the coming year, the word that came to me was kindness.
​
May the world be more kind.
May I always be kind.
​May those I know and love be kind.

I have recently been yelled at twice by strangers. On a quiet Sunday morning on campus I was running in the bike lane. A middle aged man riding the opposite direction chose to tell me loudly and clearly that the lane was not for runners.  He was right. His way of telling me was not.

While driving a couple days later another middle aged man yelled out his open window quite vehemently at me. My driving was not dangerous. Perhaps I disturbed him by intently reading his license plate (Juggler) - perhaps a little bit too closely.  But my mind starts doing somersaults with creativity when I see words that intrigue me. 

I interpret both of these experiences as symptoms of something very odd going on. We are living in times when it is OK to not be kind. I will not accept it. I do believe it is hard to be human. I don't believe it is hard to be kind.

So where is my heart as I go into this new year? What are my intentions? 

• Be Kind
• Listen Carefully
• Be Courageous
• Feel The Love Surrounding Us All
• Grow
• Find Joy

AND always keep my running shoes laced tightly.  That's so I keep standing and moving forward.

May your new year be filled with kindness, joy, and love. 

Shana Tova,

​Jessica

​​“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche​

​“If creativity is a habit, then the best creativity is the result of good work habits.
They are the nuts and bolts of dreaming.”
— Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit
 

I’ve jumped into the 100 Day Project on Instagram. 100 days of creativity. 100 days of a daily practice. You choose your daily practice of creativity, announce it to the world, and post it daily on Instagram.

The 100 Day Project began in 2008 and continues to evolve. The 2017 project involves sharing your daily project on Instagram with two hashtags: #100dayproject and your own special hashtag. This year's project began April 4th.

“Practice takes time. Practice takes commitment. Practice is a radical act in this speeded up world.  Through practice, we develop a creative habit. Through habit, we reconnect with and know ourselves again as a creative being.”

PRACTICE IS A RADICAL ACT IN THIS SPEEDED UP WORLD.

For the 100 day project, you declare what your project will be. Mine will be art journaling. But I have created rules for myself. I was first a daily pages journaler (just writing, no art). I have been journaling/writing every morning for almost 20 years. I come from the world of academia where you write in long sentences.  As an art journaler. I want to get better at collapsing my sentences into thought bites – something you can chew on.  

If a sound bite is a short extract from an interview, chosen for its pungency or appropriateness, then a thought bite (my wording) is a short extract from my head.

So my 100 Day Project is to art journal with thought bites. My personal hashtag is #100daysofthoughtbites.

I hope this is a good idea. Ask me after 100 days. I am so curious to see how it evolves.
​
Want to join me? Want to jump in? If you do it, let me know! We can follow each other.

​My “Shadow Side” show is packed up and taken down from Grove Gallery. Except one. I left “Herr Drumpf” behind.
​
​I painted Herr Drumpf in a whirlwind. He evoked the creative process in me.

The canvas of each of my paintings in my Shadow Side series are filled with words that fit the image being depicted. Herr Drumpf is painted on top of Mr. Trump’s own words. I spent countless hours cutting out Trump’s words from newspaper and magazine articles. The more I read, and cut, and glued, the more his shadow side and image became clearer.

My goal for all of the paintings in this series is to show both the light and dark side of an object or issue being depicted – whether it is the game of soccer or the power of love. That said, I had a hard time finding a bright side to Mr. Trump. Perhaps, instead it was the amusement and satisfaction I felt in using the creative process to communicate my emotions. Other than that, the more I read, the more the shadows emerged. His words are scary.  

Every artist has their own little victories when completing a painting. It might be finally figuring out how to paint a chocolate cupcake to look luscious or experimenting with how not to smear the ink from cut out magazine words. For Herr Drumpf, these victories were on a different level. They were decisions I made about the painting. 

I refused to buy an expensive canvas for Herr Drumpf. He is painted on a garage sale canvas. Reused. Recycled. During my show, Herr Drumpf was placed in the corner on the ground. He was not allowed to hang on the wall with my other paintings. And then during my reception I turned my back on him. 

AND now I have left him behind. 
 
Do feel free, however, to visit him.  And read his words. They are filled with hatred. They are racist, sexist, and xenophobic. They scare me. May we all turn our backs on him.  


To see Herr Drumpf, visit: Grove Gallery, 325 Grove St, East Lansing, MI 48823