More Flowers

April 23, 2020Jenny Dowd

Well, this year really took a turn.

I also haven’t updated my journal since December. It’s not like I haven’t been doing anything, there are actually a lot of interesting things going on in the studio, but it just didn’t seem appropriate.

It’s been tough to stay motivated in the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic, but it’s also forced me to really focus and dig into studio work. Suddenly I’m surrounded with virtual collaborations and am connecting with friends more than ever.

So, I’m going to start regular-ish posts again. And as my last post (from December which seems so so so far away) was about my tiny flowers, I think it is only appropriate to check in on what is going on with these flowers now.

On a rather gloomy day a few weeks ago, I pulled out all the little bins of flowers in my studio and made a bunch of bouquets. That turned into such a happy afternoon! Surrounded with scraps of pretty fabric and ribbons, I trimmed stems and wrapped up bunches of flowers.

My work is now featured at Wyoming Artists Collective and it’s the only place where the flowers are available online. Each bouquet is $30, which includes shipping. It seems the perfect way to send a little love to friends and family.

Flower shop

Of course if it’s local I’m always happy to drop the package on the porch and run away…

And I love seeing the bouquets in their new homes. They add little bits of color and smiles to our days of quarantine!

categories Projects, Shops with Pottery, Problem Solving, New Ideas
tags wyoming artist, wyoming artists collective, online art shopping, tiny flowers, jenny dowd flowers, mothers day gift

Packing for a show

April 01, 2017Jenny Dowd

This summer I will be included in an exhibition of artwork by 12 Wyoming women. The exhibition, Place/Settings, will be in Concord, North Carolina at The Galleries, located in the Historic Cabarrus Courthouse and curated by the Cabarrus Arts Council.

In May I will travel to Concord to install my pieces. One is Passages, which has been installed 4 different times in Wyoming since 2009. This flexible sculpture was designed to have several lives and I'm excited for this new chapter in NC.

Passages is made up of over 300 boat forms that are made from welded steel then dipped in Egyptian Paste and kiln fired (See some of the past installation here, plus check out this past blog post about the installation last fall at Persephone Bakery.) Each installation is different and I am looking forward to working within the gallery space and tying my work in to that of my colleagues.

For this installation, I've packed about 125 boats, 2 spools of wire, a ton of screw eye hooks and some wire snips. Not sure how many boats I'll use, just want to make sure I have options. I've also never shipped this work before. I padded them in tissue paper and packed them tightly in boxes with old sheets and bubble wrap. You can see that Merlin is unsure of this packing method. I think it will be ok.

The other piece I will be installing, Where the ground meets the sky, is a new and also very flexible piece. There are lots of little parts and pieces for this one: silk and velum clouds suspended from pins by silk thread, little porcelain hills plus hills with porcelain and wire flowers. (I lovingly call them hillettes.)

I am equally excited to install this piece as I am to install Passages. And I can't wait to share the process! I had to be really careful in my studio- I found all these little pieces to be particularly attractive to the studio cat, I know he probably thought he was being helpful, but I really didn't need the flowers or clouds to be perforated. Playing with and installing this piece in a cat-free space is much needed.