jennyarntzen.art

  Graphite, acrylic ink on paper - 5" x 5" (in progress) Last night three of us gathered at the dining table to work on our art projects and talk about whatever came to mind.  We allowed our creative impulses to let us know what was the next right thing to do.  We started the evening, coming in from each our separate lives. Each our separate histories, experiences, and family configurations. We brought our distress with the unfolding tyranny and kleptocracy, the risk our American families and friends are facing as they scramble to weather the storm of dis-regulated government destruction.  We shared moments of pride, happiness, and also, fear, sadness and shame.  We drank herb tea. Through the process, the lived experience of creating and sharing, our feelings of separation, isolation, and hopelessness transformed into connectedness, belonging and hope.  At the end of the evening we each had our artworks in progress in hand: a new ankle bracelet, an illustr...

  Graphite, pen, ink on notebook paper - 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" The celtic knot has captured my imagination in this time of partriarchal extinction burst and climate change. The two cannot be unrelated.  When we look at the larger timeline of human existence, our human experiments with agriculture, government, warfare and patriarchy is a small percentage of overall time. Let’s say, 450,000 years of human existence, 440,000 years of hunter / gatherer societies, 10,000 years of agriculture, government, warfare, patriarchy. It means our human existence in the social organization that we know today is only .02 % of the overall timeline of human existence. For 440,000 years, humanity managed to evolve and grow and co-exist.  It is possible the extinction burst we are enduring at this time is bigger than the downfall of patriarchy. It is possible that we are also experiencing an extinction burst of warfare, government and even agriculture. It is possible that we are in a state of coll...

  836 am Drawing together at the dining table on Thursday evening I tried a new experiment. I decided to see what would happen if I combined a topographical map with a celtic knot. For weeks this winter a discarded book of maps sat outside in our neighbours yard getting soaked, frozen and covered in snow. I walked past it almost everyday, thinking it would get picked up and thrown in the trash.  During this period, over these same weeks, the Trump/Musk regime came to power in the USA. I had been depressed and disheartened by the outcome of the US election in November. I was overwhelmed with a grief losing my Mom in early October, and then losing hope for humanity after the election.  At the same time, I carried on with my creative work, digging in deeper to the magic of sharing music, writing and art making with my friends and neighbours. I started hosting Thursday evenings at my dining table to sit and draw together and talk. I wasn’t used to socializing while I was draw...

  Graphite, pencil crayon, pen and ink, wax crayon on cardstock paper - 4" x 6" A crow, in profile facing to the right, is somehow tipping backward on an inclined ground sloping down from left to right. Hanging in space, some indeterminant distance from the crow (is it right in front of it? Is it off in the distance?) is a Celtic knot, a single line of right angles and curves that traces an overlapping, underlapping path, it’s ending is also it’s beginning. The grid of pinpricks supporting the Celtic knot are visible. Warmth emanates from the drawing in shades of orange and violet. Warm pastels are defined by dark edges and a murky sky. The ground is light against the darkness of the sky. White highlights show reflections of light emanating from outside the picture frame.  The crow is off balance in relation to the Celtic knot, however, it’s next step, to bring it into balance, would swing it to face the knot and contemplate its presence more fully. The knot is drawing the cr...

  803 am This morning the sky is clear. We are in our winter cold snap. The temperature is below freezing.   My bruises and sprains from tripping over a dog crate on Saturday night are starting to heal. Last night I backed into the corner of the open dishwasher door and gave my ankle a nasty bump. These are what I call ‘out of body’ experiences.   Last night I made another Celtic knot drawing. For some reason, this is the topic I am inspired to explore right now. I selected a knot at random from the book. I noticed it had two open ends, so i added to the design by closing the ends and turning the knot into a continuous loop. I can see now that if I had left the ends open, they would have made a connective point for additional links in an elaborate chain.   I transfer the grid marks on my drawing paper by pricking through the grid print to make holes in the drawing paper. I make the grid on my drawing program and print it out for transfer. This grid pattern is a large...

 Last Thursday my friends, Virginia and Kathy, joined me at the dining table to draw and talk. We are all women of a certain age. Our children are adults, making their ways in their lives and taking care of their own families. As we sat at the table, we shared glimpses into our life histories, comparing notes and finding similarities and differences in the experiences that shaped our sense of self and and our sense of our place in the world. We all remembered how old we were when we were allowed to wear pants instead of dresses to school. We read from the Preface of Ellen Dissanayake's 1988 book, 'What is Art For?' (Dissanayake, 1995). In this book she lays out her argument for the biological necessity of the arts in fostering self-sustaining human social cohesion. Dissanayake dared to challenge patriarchal constructs of our understanding of the role of the arts in our lives. According to Dissanayake, our art-making and art-appreciating activity is integral to our ability t...