2009 March : Jill Berry Blog

Spring Break, Day 3

Posted on March 23, 2009 - Filed Under Being an Artist | 1 Comment

This is my third day of the house to myself. I am liking it, oh yeah, I could do this more often! My art projects lept all around the house, they are frolicking in at least four rooms. I have eaten Lean Cuisine and coffee, except yesterday when I went to Rosalba’s house for brunch. [...]

Spring Break

Posted on March 21, 2009 - Filed Under About me | 1 Comment

Steve took the kids on a five day trip for Spring Break. I am alone in the house. This is so weird. How often I have longed for this, craved it, and here I am in this big, big silence. The air even seems different to me.
My computer ate everything this summer, even my backups, [...]

Reconstructing the Cathedral

Posted on March 18, 2009 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

This is the cover. It is layers of paint, boards and wax. On top is some sheet copper.
This is the beginning of the day.
The middle of the day.
Another middle of the day. There are seven pages/phases all total.
I did everything two or three times on this book. Sometimes it works like that, just one small [...]

Cathedral of a Woman’s Day

Posted on March 13, 2009 - Filed Under Creative Exercises | 4 Comments

I painted this scene of a woman’s day, inspired by some Afrikan paintings of Wosene Kosrof, Poet’s Journal (this is the second book I have made in this series, the first one sold at the auction at Artunraveled last year). It is so satisfying to me to work this way, and ironically it makes many [...]

Sea Monster Movies

Posted on March 12, 2009 - Filed Under Uncategorized | 15 Comments

This started out with the background paper, which I painted as a sample for my class. It looked like the sea, which of course reminded me of Artfest, and the theme for this year, Sea Monsters. I love old movie posters and what could be creepier than this? I am not sure if she is [...]

Paint, Color, Paper, Play!

Posted on March 10, 2009 - Filed Under 2009 Workshops | 4 Comments

We had a remarkable class this weekend at Denver University. I kept all 20 of these incredibly fun and joyous people very busy. We did lots of monoprinting, sumi, layers with reductive and additive techniques and even colored with crayons.

This is a process of painting on paper that I have used for a while now. [...]

My Father’s Legacy

Posted on March 9, 2009 - Filed Under Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Here I am with my baby brother Mark at the age of 4 1/2. My father left our family a year and a half later, when my mother was pregnant with my next brother, Andrew. There were five of us kids, all little. I did not meet up with him again until I was 23 [...]

Fortunately, Unfortunately Jill

Posted on March 4, 2009 - Filed Under Creative Exercises | 8 Comments

This weekend I am teaching Painted Pages and am busy getting ready when my little darling, Sydney, comes down with a cold. So, stop everything, heat up the soup, buy apple juice and cough drops, and get to playing Mexican Train. She wants to be right near me, so I am entertaining myself while she [...]

Book of Intention

Posted on March 3, 2009 - Filed Under 2009 Workshops | 2 Comments

This last weekend I taught a class called the “Book of Intention”. We spent some time identifying our intentions for ourselves and then making symbols for each of those intentions. The symbols are based on symbols from all over the world, or right out of our heads. Then we used watercolor crayons and water based [...]

Time to Shrine and Shine!

Posted on March 1, 2009 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

The time has BEGUN! The auction site is up and the bidding begins for the shrines that so many artists, including me, made to benefit the kids on the street in Oaxaca, Mexico. It does not take much to get them to school, in housing, in clean clothes and good food.
YOU CAN HELP! Check out [...]