Painting with my cat Leo

Tell me how it is...

was not my initial reaction to my friend saying, "Jenna, time is money. You have GOT to figure out how to speed up your painting process. Wasn't your original goal to finish 12 paintings this year?"

At the time, it was not the best dinner conversation I've had, but, in retrospect, it was a helpful and motivating. It was as though Carl Gombert, my art professor, was speaking through my friend.

Thanks for the kick in the butt. I started 5 paintings this week: Aneth, Mary, Isaka, Rebecca, and Irene. 

10 paintings are in progress.

I will finish 12 paintings by 12/12. Watch.

Beatrice and Maurin

Thanks Mom, Brandy, Melissa, and Za!

Guess What?

2 Even Me paintings are finished
5 Even Me panels are framed with African fabric.
5 Even Me panels are primed and ready for paint.
A total of 10 Even Me paintings are in progress, which is almost HALF of the project!
Stay tuned for a short video!

Beatrice

Frank Even Me Painting Finished!

Wahoo!

Frank's painting is done-skies! I'm thrilled. And, I love having two completed (minus the flat background coat and wooden-fabric frame) Even Me paintings filling up my apartment.

You're not the first person to see this photograph. One very important person has seen it already — and he's all the way in Africa! Yep, Frank's seen it!

Thanks to my friend Sara in Tanzania, who I've mentioned a gazillion times, (ergo familiarize yourself with Sara with no H) asked Frank to sit down with her during playtime because she had something to show him. Of course he agreed, especially since she had her laptop! 

Most of the kids get pretty shy when they're being recorded, but here is his reaction to seeing his 'picture':

Thank you, Sara Nickels!

The Little Things.

Lunch break post:
With a paint brush in hand, I carefully mix titanium white, dioxazine purple, and cadmium red light hue to obtain the perfect color to place right under Frank's bottom lip. This mark is one of many small marks, all varying in color. The marks are so small they are hardly recognizable when standing ten feet away. However, each brush stroke is important, as it's part of a bigger picture. The process is unhurried and the hours are long. 

It's the little things that give me encouragement.

Yesterday, along with every Wednesday at lunch, I skype with my dear friend Sara, who is currently working at the Rafiki Village in Tanzania. She gets to see Frank, Glory, John, and Beatrice every day. 

As we're catching up on recent events in our lives, she informs me of a story that I just have to share: 

Sara, also known as Meeses Neekos (Mrs. Nickels) asks the students to come up with adjectives to describe other classmates. Maurin, who is such a sweetheart, and might be the next Even Me painting, shoots her hand in the sky:

"Meeses Neekos (Mrs. Nickels), I know — famous!"
"That is an adjective, but no, Maurin, famous does not describe your classmates. Your classmates might be famous in the classroom, but they're not famous in the world."
She thinks a bit harder, "YOU! Meeses. Neekos, you are famous!"
"Thank you, Maurin, but no, I am not famous."
"But even in Uh-marica (America), you are famous?!"
"Nope."
She sits on it longer and her hand shoots up once more.
"Meeses. Neekos, I know! Mees John-uh (that's me) she is famous. She is a famous artist!"

As I was painting last night, my best friend Chryssie called. She recently moved to LA in pursuit of her dream job: working in communications/advertising in the skate industry (might I add, the beautiful, talented girl is a rockstar skater and already has an agent for modeling! Let's be real: she's cool). We're reminiscing, laughing, and catching up when she tells me she's been thinking about how to advertise my Even Me project. "Jenna, I want the world to see my best friend's art." Her ambitions are high and excitement contagious. Her ideas left me with, "hmm...why haven't I thought of that? Those are splendid ideas!" 

Someone I've yet to mention on this blog, and will probably kill me when he reads this, is Za Alexander. I've never had someone who is more encouraging, motivating, and just plain helpful. He always has practical solutions to my questions. In frustration I ramble on, "I need to transport four Even Me paintings to Pensacola and back, and they don't fit in my car...bla bla bla" His response to that question, and every other question is, "Jenna, I'll take care of it."

All these little things, the words, the thoughts, and generosity make Even Me. Thank you all for the encouragement you give me every day. 

What's been going on in the studio!

Faces ALL Over!

Nne (number 4 in Kiswahili)!

That's right! I started painting number 4!!! Frank (below) is almost finished, but I decided to start painting number 4, Beatrice, while he is drying, waiting for his next (hopefully final) coat of paint!

For Those of You Wondering...

Why is it called Even Me?

The phrase "even me" is one of those idioms of Tanzanian English. It's used the way Americans would say, "Me too," but coming from a child it sounds so sweet and touching. Always responding with a "Yes, even you," not only verifies that child's statement, but also confirms his or her essential human dignity.

When will you finish all 24 paintings?

Originally, I thought I would finish all 24 paintings by 2014, but I don't want to compromise the quality of the work to reach a certain deadline. With that being said, I hope to finish in a timely manner. I am 100% dedicated to this project.

Where will the paintings end up?

Ultimately, I'm not sure. However, I want to show the 24 piece collection anywhere that's big enough: airports, galleries, warehouses, banks, you name it. I am currently networking and making connections for venues now (so if you have any recommendations, let me know). 

I want to go big. The bigger I go, the more value each painting will hold, which will ultimately increase the price. Increasing the sales is crucial, as all proceeds will go to the child via Rafiki Foundation.

Why don't the paintings have eyes?

“This makes no sense at all. Why would you paint portraits without eyes? The portrait isn’t complete, it’s unfinished – something is missing!”

When this statement was directed towards me regarding my even me project, I couldn’t clearly explain why I was, indeed, leaving the eyes out of twenty-four portraits. The faces are large, and it’s quite noticeable that the eyes are missing. In fact, when I showed the first finished painting to Glory, the subject, the initial response from her sisters was, “Glory! Where are her eyes?” Nonetheless, I still hadn’t come up with an eloquent, genuine answer. Instead, I responded: it’s a new type of portrait; I’m exploring with artistic elements such as composition, negative space, and shape. Pre-verbally, it was more, but I couldn’t muster up the words without sounding hostile in my explanation. However, now I am ready to tell you why I am not painting the eyes.

In today’s society, we have access to anything, everything, all the time. On my way to work, I heard an advertisement for a smart phone. A small, curious boy asks his father a question, “Daddy, what are batteries made out of?” He didn’t know the answer off the top of his head, so the father quickly takes out his phone and, with a sigh of relief, types or speaks his son’s question. Within seconds, he explains, “Batteries are made out of five basic components: a resilient plastic container, positive and negative internal plates made of lead, plate separators made of porous synthetic material, electrolyte, a dilute solution of sulfuric acid and water, better known as battery acid, and lead terminals, the connection point between the batter and whatever it powers.” He is happy, his son is informed, and we are convinced to buy a smart phone. Convenient, immediate, accurate: the world is at our fingertips.

Not only has technology given us the ability to know all the answers, but it has made every corner of the world virtually accessible to anyone. I can see the Northern Lights, the ancient pyramids, the Taj Mahal, or the Petrified Forest with a few clicks. I can see whatever I want. This availability makes me wonder: if I’ve seen the images, have I experienced it? I know what it looks like, and my imagination can only take it from there. 

Imagine this situation: my friend recounts in great detail her trip to Zion National Park, and I respond with an unimpressed, “Oh, cool, well, I’ve seen pictures, I know.” Or, “Did you make it to Watchman trail, the one that takes about two hours? Hopefully you didn’t hike it during mid-day, because it gets pretty hot. The best time to hike it is either in the early morning or late afternoon. I’ve read all about it. I know.” We can Google Maps any remote spot in the world and speak as though we’ve been there, experienced it.

What if all this access and availability is tricking us? Have we truly experienced by solely seeing? What about the other four senses?  What about the emotion and spirituality that come with these? Honestly, I haven’t lived Zion National Park – I don’t know what the canyons smell like, what the wind feels like, what the dust tastes like, or what the desert echoes sound like.

So what happens when we see commercials about starving children in Tanzania? We see the white man holding the sickliest, most frail-looking child in an effort to convince us to get involved, to give money, or at least to reconsider tossing our leftovers in the wastebasket. This overplayed commercial has turned into a cliché. In a multitude of settings, school cafeterias, five star restaurants, at our own dinner tables, we hear: “(Child’s name), there are (adjective) kids in (country).”  This is followed by, “So eat your food.” Has the starving child only convinced us to clean our plates? Surely, that wasn’t the objective of the commercial.

On the other hand, because we’ve seen the images of the Tanzanian child’s big eyes, her jigger-eaten toes, pointy ribs, and sorrowful face, we have visually experienced her situation. Because we’ve seen it, maybe we can imagine what it would be like, to some extent. But for the most part, we continue on with our normal day-to-day, guilt-free lives: after all, we’re here, they’re there.

The reality is, the Tanzanian girl has seen. But she has also smelled, tasted, heard, and touched without needing to use her imagination. Those eyes may have seen her father kill his wife, and then himself. That nose may have smelled the fumes of alcohol that accompany physical abuse. Those lips may have tasted blood after being beaten by a jealous and contemptuous stepfather. Those ears may have heard her mother, in an effort to support her family, moan as a stranger forces himself into her. And perhaps those fingers have held the paper with her national exam scores, while her heart felt the utter hopelessness caused by an impossible, corrupted test for which the schools cannot prepare their students, and which dictates an unfavorable future. And we think we’ve experienced something by seeing a photograph.

Something is missing. Something is not quite right. And that is exactly what I want people to feel when they look at a wall of eyeless portraits: dissatisfaction. I hope that this emotion will evoke questions, “Why are the eyes missing?  What has this child seen?” I don’t want to tell the whole story, because we don’t know the whole story. Not one of us, me included, has any idea what these children have endured. If I give the impression that the whole story is told, like it appears to be in the starving children commercial, we leave unchanged. We feel as though we’ve experienced, and thus, can relate. If the eyes, the windows to one’s soul, remain unseen, we feel cheated. We feel wronged, like there is something more, but we can’t know it.

Even Me is funded through kickstarter.