Tag: eco-friendly paint

Spirit of Ochre

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June 7 marks the date of a solo Art Exhibition featuring my Art at the Piper J Gallery in Truckee, CA.

The reception opens at the first Art Walk of the Summer for the Truckee Businesses. I will be giving a short talk about my work and processes at the gallery beginning at 5 pm. All Art work featured in this exhibition is new and alive with new ways of incorporating brighter colors and different animals. Yes, the popular bears and Reindeer will also be there. Come join us for a pleasant cool evening, wine, treats and a walk about town.

It is the “Spirit of Ochre” that brings color and meaning to Art; it breathes in the life and mystery of the ancient past exhaling the curiosity and wonder of it today.

Enjoy! Jennifer

We are just entering the half way mark of the year and ready to embrace another half year still ahead. For all of us time passes differently, yet there are new beginnings, ideas and opportunities rising. I had hoped to set dates for workshops but have found that this was too much to plan while the Piper J Gallery in Truckee set sights on opening a second gallery in Truckee, Ridgeline Gallery, in the center of town. Lots of energy and preparations are still in progress with the hope of opening this wonderful space by the end of June. Here more Art and artists along with photography will be on display.

Anyone interested in taking a workshop in July and/or August, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Please email me with your interest.

Enjoy the summer days!

New Work, New Ideas, New Beginnings

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The past year had its challenges, but we worked hard to see through them, to keep moving forward.  Now we turn our gaze to higher goals and ideas that bring inspiration, hope and joy.  I enjoy seeing the “new beginnings” as I play with familiar shapes and figures across my canvases using different colors, textures and themes that bring delight; inscribing and embedding new pictographic messages to uplift and challenge ways of old thinking into new ways and ideas, therefore, creating new beginnings.

This year I am offering two pigment paint workshops. In these workshops I teach the processes I use from collecting minerals to using them to paint on a canvas or a clay surface.  One is possible at the end of March and the other in June. Both are to be held at the Piper J Gallery in Truckee.  I hope to finalize the dates soon.  Also, please contact me with questions or considerations of possible private group workshops or pigment collecting hikes here in Nevada City or other places nearby.

On another note, the Wild and Scenic Film Festival begins next week, Thursday February 13, at Center for the Arts in Grass Valley, CA to kick off the festival with its annual Art Exhibition and Reception, “Wild at Heart” 4:30 – 6:30.  Come join us! You are very welcome! The Festival runs Feb 13 – 23.

I have one large painting in the show, “In A Purple Universe” and three sculpture pieces from an installation, “Echoes of Wonder: A Reindeer Garden,” showcased at the Piper J Gallery, Truckee CA, in September 2024 and in the Open Studios Tour here in Nevada County West, October 2024

Ochre Rest: 12.5×9.5×5″
Taking Flight: “Dragonfly Dreams”24x10x7”

Lastly, included in this blog is a link to a video, a short trailer to a longer film, made this past year.  It is introduced by my daughter, Ashley, and shows a glimpse of how we work together to hike, collect minerals and process them.  The film, “Nature to Art” was produced by Jayanti Sakar, Graduate student at UNR.

Keep In Touch! Enjoy and Kind regards,

Jennifer

From out of the Fire

New Works

Working with the guidance of artist, Deborah Bridges, who creates phenomenal figurative sculptures in clay, I have taken up the endeavor to bring the images from my paintings into 3-d.

After many experiments with different clay bodies and mineral test tiles, I am creating these images through the process of pit firing. I dug a small pit into one of our raised beds for easy access. Then I built an enclosed space around this pit with fire bricks, stacking them to keep heat inside but a bit of air to breathe. I collected various materials from our surrounding forests for fuel. I waited for cold rainy days to set-in and prepared the pit along with the bisque clay figurines. I added different layers of combustibles under, around, and over each sculpture to encourage variations in the burn process. The fire was kindled. It burned all day, smoking nicely after I placed a metal cover over the top. It smoked throughout the night into the wee morning hours when only heat from the lower part of the pit still felt warm. Then carefully each figure was removed. Aww, the thrill of it all! Such magic!

Statue from the pit

Meet Me in Italy!

Features & Fanfare

I’ve been invited to teach in Italy!

This June,
join me for an Earth Art Immersion at

Cascina Rodiani – Green Hospitality

Click to Download form for Details

REGISTER on ‘Workshops’

 

July 2019 Featured Artist

Features & Fanfare

Jen Rugge Union _July 2019

Many Hands Make a Masterpiece

Studio Visit

It was a great time having our Art group come by to visit my studio. We laughed, had wonderful conversations, food and interacted to create an art piece together. We mixed red ochre, yellow ochre, and mica gold as our colors. We used recycled paper on a masonite board, 18 x 24″, for our canvas. Then we went paint-happy on our hands…with gloves, of course. What a bonding experience!

Voluptuous Venus

New Works

Inspiration comes in different ways. Recently I joined a group of artists, all women, to support our art endeavors and experiences.  From the conversations and my studies of ancient artworks, I found I was drawn to the small stone statues of voluptuous women, well-known as “Venus”. Soon thereafter, visions of this ancient beauty flooded my thoughts…I had to paint her.

I prepared the canvas, mixed my paints and began to work swept up in the ancestral past. Incorporated into the painting are symbols that not only were found in ancient cave etchings, but cross into roots of ancient written languages such as Egyptian, Phoenician, and Hebraic pictographs. Embedded into this painting are the meanings given by scholars today. The ancient relics of Venus are mostly regarded as fertility goddesses. Yet, women had a more valuable standing where, “Earth brings forth life, and Earth nourishes life, and so is the analogous powers of woman…the mother too of our second birth, our birth as spiritual entities.”¹ And this work conveys that…

Voluptuous Venus

Symbols

Woman — nurtures, sustains and maintains tender constant support and protection

Staff — teacher, guide, protection, moving forward (feminine)

Ox — power, strength, leadership (masculine). Together these symbolize authority.  “EL” is the Aleph, the first, and Lamed, the staff.

Position of figure — like the Hebraic “tsade” meaning side.  It is the trail, path or journey the individual takes.

¹Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine by Joseph Campbell