october 1

10-01-15 "just make art"
10-01-15 “just make art” —SOLD—

8×5″ acrylic, ink

This may be the first in a series of little artworks with inspirational quotes by Iowa artists I interviewed back in the late 1990s and early 2000s as part of the Iowa Women Artists Oral History Project and Beyond 9-11: The Art of Renewal in Iowa. I may do this for the month of October in my daily janes. Or I might make it a regular feature every few days for the rest of the year.

This quote is by Barbara Robinette Moss, an artist born and raised in Alabama who lived in Iowa City at the time I interviewed her. She wrote two well-received memoirs after we spoke: Change Me Into Zeus’s Daughter and Fierce. In 2009, I was saddened to hear that cancer had taken her life. Too soon, too soon.

I have written a book collecting quotes like this called Just Make Art using Barbara’s line as inspiration. A published book may or may not happen, but a daily jane series probably will.

For this piece, I swirled around different acrylic colors on a sketchbook page, then went in with some ink markers for the words. Don’t forget to click on the image to see the full version (and hopefully to make the writing readable)! Enjoy!