American Illustration 32

I am super-duper excited to inform you all that one of my pieces will be included in the upcoming American Illustration 32 annual! The piece that was selected is the Lizard Queen illustration I created for Ten Paces and Draw's 2012 fashion swap. I owe much gratitude to this year's AI judges and to Alyssa and Rachel of Ten Paces for asking me to participate!

Don't Call Me Honney

Hello all! You may recall the hand-crafted brooches I made to sell at the MICA Art Market in December. Well, I was asked by the lovely Sara Barnes of Eyra Illustration Gallery to make a new batch. They are included in the current Eyra show, "Don't Call Me Honney," which has a Baltimore theme. We all know how much I love my hometown, so I had a lot of fun making these.

Each brooch is 100% one-of-a-kind and only $18 a piece! You can see the entire show online here, and you can purchase my brooches here!

Big thanks to Sara Barnes for inviting me to participate!

Go Ravens!!!

Baltimore is a very exciting place to be right now! Everyone is psyched and ready for the Superbowl (even weirdo artists who don't normally care about sports). Go Ravens!

Brown Paper Bag's Collage Scrap Exchange

I'm really glad I had the chance to do some collages for Brown Paper Bag Blog's third Collage Scrap Exchange. I swapped scraps with Paul Bernard, who sent me some lovely stuff to work with. Below are two of the five pieces I made for the swap. You can see all five on the Collage Scrap Exchange site!

Big thanks to Sara Barnes for organizing the swap!

Collagical Girl

Just playing around with some scraps! 

New World Order: An Illuminati Image Search!

Or (alternate blog entry title): "In Which Janna Spends Way Too Much Time Jabbering About the Illuminati"

I have a piece in Light Grey Art Lab Gallery's upcoming Message in a Bottle show! The theme of the show is illustrations that are cryptic, secretive, and/or have hidden images or illusions. I've always been interested in secret societies, so I decided to make a piece about one of the most famous ones, the Illuminati. 

Detail: horns galore!

The Illuminati was started by Adam Weishaupt in Bavaria in 1776 as a group for Enlightenment-minded men to - supposedly - just talk shop and chillax. Ten years later the Bavarian government shut the group down and most scholars say that was that. Many other people, however, believe that the Illuminati persisted in secret, its members infiltrating various existing societies (such as the Freemasons) and world governments (such as our own U.S. of A). Some even believe that the Illuminati goes back even further than 1776, relating them back to the infamous Knights Templar of the Middle Ages and even further back, to ancient Egypt. 

Detail: Jammin'

For hundreds of years the Illuminati have been blamed for everything from causing world wars, to poisoning the populous with fast food and toxic "chemtrails" in the sky, to covering up alien abductions and reptilian humanoids living under the earth. However their ultimate goal, most believers say, is to create one world government led by the Antichrist. Pretty much every politician and celebrity you can think of has been accused of Illuminati ties, including (bizarrely) many popular rappers, in recent years. Illuminati conspiracy theorists can be anyone from gun-toting, apocalypse shelter-owners to teenage kids in hip-hop clubs. Poll your friends and relations and you may find a few Illuminati conspiracy theorists among them (I've found a couple)!

Detail: hip-hop royalty

I've been wanting to do an image search piece for a while, and I figured the mysterious world of the Illuminati was a great theme to work with. I spent three days alone in my room doing nothing but reading Illuminati conspiracy theory blogs and message boards in order to find out what people are currently saying about the Illuminati. It was fascinating and fun and incredibly creepy. Every celebrity, character, and symbol in the image search references real Illuminati conspiracy theories I found in my search. 

Detail: Perhaps the best thing I have ever painted, ever.

Okay, I know that trip to the department of back story was totally superfluous, but thanks for sticking with me anyway. Click on the image below to find all of  the Illuminati figures and symbols, BEFORE THEY FIND YOU!

PS: Extra points if you can find me, the artist! 

PPS: The Message in a Bottle show opens January 25th at Light Grey Art Lab and runs through February 15th. If you're in the area of Minneapolis, Minnesota please check it out and snap some photos for me!

PPPS: If you're fond of "New World Order: An Illuminati Image Search" and want to look at it all the time (or hate it and want to throw darts at it), PLEASE PURCHASE PRINTS HERE.

Hand-Painted Pins

I made these hand-painted pins (or brooches, or badges or whatever name you prefer) for the Art Market at MICA. If you're in Baltimore please come to the MICA Art Market, TODAY through Saturday the 8th! I will be selling these pins along with calendar tea towels, bird barrettes, original paintings, and painted trays. My stuff will be there all four days but if you want to stop and say hi, I'll be there Thursday and Saturday from 11:30-3:30.

I hope to see you there!

Mary, the Blessed Mother

I'm so excited to finally be able to tell you about this! I have a piece in the amazing group show Girls: Fact & Fiction, opening December 7th and running until January 4th, at Light Grey Gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The concept for the show is that there will be two rooms in the gallery, one dedicated to real life females and one dedicated to fictional female characters/figures. I chose to make an illustration of the Virgin Mary (who, along with other religious figures and mythological beings, is considered "fact" for this show). Because of my Catholic upbringing, Mary has been an important female figure in my life for about as long as I can remember. It was a fun little challenge I set up for myself, attempting to depict in a new and interesting way a person who has already been depicted millions of times before.

You can order prints of the piece here! And if you order before December 7th you're guaranteed to get it before the holidays. How perfect would this print be as a Christmas present?!

Also, if you purchase $100 or more worth of merchandise in the Light Grey Gallery shop, you get a free copy of the Girls book, which includes images and write-ups for all of the pieces in the show. If you need suggestions for other prints to buy, I have several friends who also have work in the show: Jimmy Malone, Julianna Brion, Mika Nakano, Kathleen Marcotte, Celine Loup, Kyle Fewell, Kali Ciesemier.

I won't be able to attend the opening on December 7th but if you're in the Minneapolis area you should definitely check it out!

Cats & Dogs and Dogs & Cats

Howdy do, everyone? If you're in the Baltimore area you should definitely check out the Cats & Dogs and Dogs & Cats show at Spur Gallery THIS FRIDAY NIGHT, 6:30-8:30PM. It includes my work along with several other people I know and adore, including a number of my former instructors and schoolmates at MICA. There will also be real, live, and adoptable (caged) cats and (roaming) dogs at the reception, courtesty of BARCS! Plus, 50% of the proceeds from the sale of art will go directly to BARCS to help out more cats and dogs in need.

I created this piece specifically for the show. I don't actually know that much about dogs so I thought it would be fun to learn about some breeds. Since there's, like, a gazillion, I narrowed it down to extant breeds originating in America.

I also included my Cheshire Cat piece and a painting of some cats that I plan on using for a pattern one of these days (you may remember getting a peek at it when I was interviewed by Brown Paper Bag). 

The Fox is Black

I made a desert-themed desktop wallpaper for The Fox is Black's Desktop Wallpaper Project! It looks like this:

And you can download it here. It comes in, like, a bajillion sizes. iphone and ipad, too!

Big thanks to Bobby at TFIB!