Looking for some ‘Inspirivity’
Jen Wagner used to wonder if she would have enough material to base her artwork project around.
The lifelong artist made the decision to complete an art project a day for an entire year as a resolution earlier this year.
The plan had been for her and her sister Deb Abell to work together on some artistic projects. The sisters used to pool their creative muscle to paint murals and other commissions as well as decoration projects.
They would also donate their work to help raise money for local organizations like the Lange Fuhs Cancer Center at Memorial Hospital or to be auctioned off for Holy Trinity Catholic School’s annual event, The Hoot.
“It was December and I said we should start doing some painting again,” Jen explained.
Unfortunately, Deb’s husband Doug learned he had cancer and was facing a hard battle. Caring for him took priority and Deb had to step back from joining Jen for the artistic endeavor.
However, Jen had made it her personal goal to complete a piece of art every day. To accomplish it, rather than pull out her paints and art materials, the 44-year-old Jasper resident decided to use an iPad her husband Mike had given her as a gift. She hadn’t fiddled with it much although the flat screen and responsive pen provided a somewhat familiar medium. However, it came with a learning curve.
Through trial and error, Jen taught herself how to use a graphic design program on the tablet – she has a bachelor’s in graphic design but programs have changed since she graduated from USI.
She had wondered about moving from the tradition materials she was used to, but after learning the program, she fell in love with using the iPad. It’s completely portable and with the ease of “undoing” certain strokes with the touch of a button as well as the other advantages allowed by painting digitally, she doesn’t go a day without picking it up to draw or work on something.
After learning the iPad, the next hurdle was finding subjects for the daily pieces she was dedicated to completing. At first, she used familiar things like holidays as inspiration but she quickly ran out of ideas.
“When I started, I didn’t do quotes but then I wondered how I could do a piece of art a day,” she explained. “I did some IU pieces because my son’s attending there and then holidays but that’s only a few things. I needed something every day, so I decided to just do quotes. I can do one of those each day for a year.”
She had a bank to draw on for memorable quotes from different online sources she followed and the Instagram page she started began to fill up with the individual pieces of work starting on January 28. Originally, it was a private page but she allowed her son to see it and he told some friends and more people started wanting to see her work.
“I didn’t want anyone to see it,” she said wondering if they would like it.
But she opened her art up for scrutiny and the project went onto a live Instagram page. People started following her. ‘Then one of my aunts found out and she doesn’t have Instagram and she wanted it on Facebook,” Jen laughed.
So she started a Facebook page to post on. Called Inspirivity — a combination of “inspiration” and “creativity — the Facebook page has grown in popularity (and her friends and family can see the pieces each day.)
Then Memorial Hospital reached out to see if Jen could provide some stuff for them. Last week she and her sister delivered a bunch of prints of her work to hand out to patients at the Lange Fuhs Cancer Center. That’s Doug, Deb’s husband. You can follow his battle against cancer at the Facebook Page, Super Doug vs. Cancer.
Each quote is hand drawn. Jen uses fonts as inspiration but then adds her own style to the letters. And, acknowledging her own love for trees, most pieces have whimsical trees wrapping around the quotes.
A piece can take days to complete and each day she may work on several pieces throughout the day. Adding flowers, removing them, recoloring sections, changing elements until she feels good about a piece and posting it.
Sometimes she is surprised by what is liked on social media and what isn’t.
“Sometimes you get those pieces you can’t stand but you post it anyway and everyone loves it,” Jen explained. “Then you have something you love and no one likes it or it only gets three ‘likes.’”
Regardless, the project has put her back to work and reignited a passion for her art that was lacking for a while. Any spare moment she has available, she is picking up the iPad to work. With her renewed passion and support from friends and family, the material is never lacking for her art.
“I love it. I feel like when I am in the zone I am not thinking about other things,” she explained. “It’s like meditation. It is calming and it feels good to be artistic.”
Along with the social pages — Facebook and Instagram — you can follow, Jen has an online page where pieces can be ordered here. Her goal wasn’t to open a shop or start a business but so many people have asked for prints that she decided to make the pieces available online. “Someone in the UK bought one and put it on a sticker,” she said explaining she just wants to create art.
Inspired by a company called Live Life Nice — a company hosted out of the Sixers Innovation Lab crafted by Kimball in Philadelphia (Jen’s husband is president of Kimball Office), Jen decided to start a new hashtag campaign on Facebook and you can add to the conversation by following and using the hashtag #postforgood.
Here is a video of Jen working on a piece.
