So, curious person, we meet again. If you don't see the answer to your questions here, you can contact me!
Q: Your website appears to be in transition?
A: Yes. I am slowly changing all the URLs on all the images, changing the pages from gallery pages (with fading slideshows) to cleaner Gallery Blocks, linking and unlinking things, disappearing and reappearing text, deleting click-through links in my galleries, adding a Lightbox feature, and generally throwing the entire thing into a slow, beautiful, agonizing chaos. Artists should not do websites, though I am grateful that I can, at least, limp along with the daily assistance of tech support and some workaround hacks.
Q: Can I buy your prints?
A: YES! While I don't offer them for sale on my Squarespace site yet... I do offer them on ETSY (when my shop isn’t on vacation), and some of my designs are also on Threadless as tees (I'll get around to adding other items), and on Society6 as iPhone cases, tote bags, pillows, and other fun home decor. I also can custom add an item if you need it and I’m not super slammed.
Q: Do you ship to other countries?
A: Yes, sometimes. If you go to the design you want on Etsy, and look below the image at a tab called "Shipping & Policies", under "Payment & Methods" is a nifty little drop-down menu that should show your country and how much it costs to ship. I typically ship single prints Internationally in a flat rigid mailer, and larger prints flat in a box, but sometimes in a tube, to prevent damage during shipping & Customs. Some countries are grouped together, like the European Union. If you don't know if you are in the European Union or one of the other groupings, you can easily look it up.
Q: I don't see the art-design-print I want offered on your Etsy site.
A: In that instance, I can add a custom listing with your name on it. All the prints cost the same for the same sizes. Sometime, if a design is very recent, I may not offer it for sale until I'm satisfied with the image, or it may be that the art is older and I don't have it prepared and sized for standard size prints yet. I often show art as Artist's Proofs, and then make adjustments to future prints afterwards.
Q: Can I buy your designs on anything else, besides prints?
A: Eventually. I'm on Threadless.com in one of the Artist's Shops here. It's just really time consuming to prepare digital files for each product. I usually start adding products with my most popular designs first. Threadless offers tees, phone cases, and a lot of other product options I know my art illustrations are going to look great on. I also have stuff in my Society6 site, and you can get some of my more popular designs on tees and home decor.
Q: How do you make your illustrations?
A: It depends on the art series. In the old days, I did it Old School with traditional cut-and-paste collage, working primarily with acrylic paint (t-shirt fabric paint, actually), ebony pencil, colored pencils, acrylic medium, watercolor, gouache, oil paints, varnishes. Then I discovered digital media and I worked for a bunch of years with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I really like the feel of old vintage and antique lithographs, and so I do mashups to create my own... "creatures". After my daughter was born, I couldn't have xacto knives and varnishes around anymore, and I began to create entirely digital illustrations. It takes up very little space and isn't the least bit messy or dangerous. Recently, I have been mulling over how to take my work to a new level. I'd like to do a process where I make it really, really big... Now that she’s older, I can return to actual old-school drawing, painting, and collage.
Q: Do you have any really large artwork?
A: I'm giving a great deal of consideration to printing some of my "lady gardens" on very large canvases, and continuing to paint on them. I think they'd be splendid really enormous, mounted over a fireplace or a bed. Very inspirational. Or shocking. But then Jane said nothing's shocking, really. I have some canvas art on Society6, so you can check there periodically, and I may do the same on Threadless.
Q: Do you just start working from an idea, or do you research before you create your art?
A: Sometimes I start working right away, and sometimes I fall down a rabbit hole following the information down the fractal branching, and it's so interesting I just immerse myself in it. I can't tear myself away until I'm fully satisfied, and I can't begin working until I've read all the articles, looked at all the antique illustrations, read fairytales and trivia, historical facts. Sometimes I might research a topic briefly, but often I might be on a research bender for six months or longer before I start working on the art in earnest. Sometimes the seed idea that sparks a piece of art is very, very small. You know how seeds are. You plant one and before you know it the vines have taken over your whole life.
Q: Why is your blog empty?
A: Because I started to make a funny Shakespearean joke about blogging and that's as far as I got. I wasn't sure what to blog about, and I found that I really don’t have time to blog. Or vlog. or whatever. Art only. Social media takes up a huge amount of time and I wish it didn’t. Also, I have a lot of strong opinions and I really don't have time to draw the ire of others and deal with all the fallout. Not my fairytale, not my trolls. Maybe I'll blog about something eventually, maybe about how blogging is only for those who have the luxury of time for blogging.
Q: Your artwork is gd amazing. Can I get a tattoo of it?
A: Thank you mightily, and... sure? If you have an awesome tattoo artist and they don't have a problem with it, I don't see why not. Send me picture, I'd love to see it!
Q: You put tattoos on a lot of your characters. Do YOU have any tattoos?
A: Nope. I am essentially a blank canvas. If I did, though, I'd likely favor blackwork and elements of the incredible and delicious antique engraving collage artwork of British artist Dan Hillier. Unfortunately, I’m allergic to everything and I’d probably be allergic to tattoo ink, so no thanks.
Q: Can I write about you and show your art on my blog?
A: Yes, and there's nothing more gratifying! It's fine with me as long as you ASK, and give me a head's up first. Then send me a link when it's live! There's nothing more exciting than seeing another person talk about your art, but nothing more sad than discovering a blog post about it that is several years old and you never knew existed.
Q: Your head must be an... interesting place to live. What inspires all this?
A: EVERYTHING. Road signs. Words. Food. Wine. Science. Birds. Clouds. Trees. Stars. Movies. Books. Nature. Dreams. I live every day in awe of everything. The whole world is amazing to me, and I find delight in little things, and overwhelming love for every aspect of the natural world.
Q: Wow, you're really prolific! When do you sleep?
A: Prolific is just another way of saying "has no concept of available art storage space", but yes, I have created a lot of artwork. And I do sleep, but I have a sleep disorder. I essentially do not enter the phase of sleep that allows a person to be fully rested. I am either awake or asleep. I have a brief event upon waking or sleeping called a "hypnagogic hallucination". It occurs for fractions of a second, but I have lived whole lifetimes and traveled the universe in those vivid moments. I can wake in seconds and get up, move about, and have a coherent conversation. According to tests, I do not dream. Or sleep. But I beg to differ with that oversight, for what do people really know about dreaming? I like to think I fold time & space in order to get my work done quickly and still have lots of time for sleeping or goofing around.
Q: What are your dreams like?
A: EPIC. Because I do not experience REM sleep, what I have are "hypnagogic hallucinations". These are intensely vivid dreams that occur as the body is transitioning awake and only happen for a few seconds. In those few seconds, I have lived whole lifetimes, had grand adventures, and even attended a reception for the end of the universe in a meadow on a far flung world which was calculated to have the best vantage point. The evening ended in a light drizzle and we all adjourned to a coffee shop. I also remember most of my dreams. I have remembered ones I had when I was as young as five. All of this material has fueled my art and writing.
Q: Do you only sell prints, or do you have originals for sale?
A: Sometimes. I frequently tire of them laying about taking up space and threaten to burn them in the backyard fire pit. Occasionally I give them away randomly to friends. I decided a few years ago to take a cue from Max Ernst and only offer prints of my collage art. I was weary of having to always explain to people how they were done, and having people pressing their noses up on the pieces as they peered all around trying to see my cutwork. I also was greatly offended when people de-valued what I had created by asking if I'd just cut some creatures out of a book to frame up. (In what universe or book would these creatures have come?!! They are MY fancies, MY monsters, MY creations.)
Q: Where's the book?!!
A: I supposed some of these art series would make lovely coffee table books, and I had not considered writing anything about it until you mentioned that. I'll work on it, though I'm curious about eBooks. I really only write because I can't NOT write. I am as driven and compelled to write as I am to create art and images. Storytellers cannot help themselves.
Q: Your search feature is terrible! I can't find anything!
A: Well, sorry about that, I only put in Search Bars shortly ago, and I still have about 400 pieces of art to add tags, text, and categories to. I imagine the search won't find them if they're not tagged or categorized. So far it's taking a lot longer than I thought it would to add tags, since I have to add them one at a time to individual images. That makes me feel crazy.
Q: Why don't you do P.O.S.T. anymore?
A: It was a pain in the arse. I created a new series every year to have printed, to frame (or not), and hang for display, make a statement, write up copy for each image, create show cards to distribute, run POST promotional materials all over the place, send out digital newsletters, send out press releases, had to clean up my house and studio, and get food and wine. One year only two people drank any wine, and one person drank half a box of red in 45 minutes. Then you wait six hours a day for two days, just for people to come look. It was better when there were a lot of adjacent participants, you know, studio clusters so people could hit a lot in one area. But people dropped out and never participated again. Everyone expected to make a little money, but hardly anyone did. And there were a lot more visitors when the tour buses for POST brought people out and dropped them off a block away from my studio on Baltimore Avenue. The last few years I couldn't figure out why numbers had fallen off, and discovered that the POST tour buses weren't bringing anyone across the river on the West of Broad tour anymore. Also, it was a huge cost overall, from the registration fee to everything else I had to pay for. But I really enjoyed visiting with people and talking about my art. I think the most interactive show I ever did was the Xenobiology Art Show (I also call it Astrobiology or Alien Biology too). Everyone there was totally geeking out. Biologists are so funny!