How Art Has Made All The Difference by Jennifer Ewing

What would I be if I were not an artist? For this mostly a right-brained human, the answer might have led to great unhappiness. I am not a linear thinker nor do I like to be boxed in. Freedom for me and my creative spirit is what keeps me going.

Over the years I have wondered if only I had more of a musical ear or a scientific interest, what might have happened to my path? Now in my early seventies, I can look back on this question a bit more objectively and less passionately than in earlier decades. So much water under the bridge that this question does not intrigue me as it used to. So much has happened to confirm the success of my childhood decision to be an artist. I am very much at home with my chosen path and am grateful for what this has given me and all that I have been able to share. Art seems to whisper in my ear as a muse would do in ancient times. This soft voice gives me insights into my potential and helps me go further.

When I was 7, my mother tried to get me into other pursuits that failed miserably. Like ballet, where I was in agony most of the time. When the class ended we were required to put on a pageant with real ballet outfits and a very scary audience that traumatized me. Tap dancing was marginally better than ballet but I was not graceful nor coordinated. And again, there was a final big pageant full of judging eyes to endure. Dancing for me was a foreign land that I wanted to stay far away from. And I had not an ounce of affinity for that art form.

Piano lessons lasted longer and were more brutal because there was always that ugly old piano sitting in the living room just waiting for me to tend to my practice. My mother would beg me to play for company and that became a consistent torture. She loved to play the piano so of course, I would too. The good side was that my younger sister had to go through all this with me and we could commiserate.

My father tried his best to make me into a mathematician at a very early age. This was his passion and he had some good tricks up his sleeve which still bring a smile to my face. He would make a “fun” set of flash cards and use them as if they held magic powers. His reverence for numbers and sequences were not passed down to his daughters. His second love was chess and he played whenever he could. We always had a chess board close by that my sister and I avoided like the plague. I believe that math and chess have their very own language that I could never learn or speak nor cared about. I had found another one.

I begged for art lessons. At least my grandfather recognized my fledgling abilities and talked my parents into sending me off to the Chicago Art Institute for classes. This provided a whole new world for me to explore in a very cool place that was ten El stops away from my house. I loved riding the El and walking into the Institute. It was far greater than school or even church for me. It was an exotic art palace where I would be encourated to try out my drawing and painting skills in the midst of huge collections of masterworks. All those paintings in frames made me dizzy with energy that fed my soul.

My grandfather, Curt Behm, came from a family of wood carvers who had immigrated from Germany. He had grown up surrounded by massive furniture crafted with exceptional skill. His appreciation for art was high and this filtered into my curious childhood brain. He was no stranger to the Art Institute because his father, Gustav, had taught wood carving there in 1900 and Curt had great respect for the school.

In the 50’s there was a contest one could find on the inside of a match book where a prize was offered for duplicating a man’s profile printed there. I seem to remember that the man had a hat and had a pipe. This gave him character. The reward was a scholarship for drawing lessons. My grandparents would prompt me multiple times to try my hand at this. It was fun and I felt a kind of calling from a larger world far outside my house. But I never remember entering the contest. Another pause to question what might have been.

When I was 7, I would accompany my father downtown to his chess club where one chess player was also an artist. His name was Jules Stein and I will always be grateful for how he demonstrated to me the way contour lines worked to achieve a likeness by a deft and confident hand. I was mesmerized as I imitated his lines and became more confident myself. It felt so empowering to be able to draw with ease like Jules. He also taught me an appreciation of how chess players usually sit very still which is key to getting an accurate likeness.

After 7th grade, nothing else mattered to me but art. Drawing became my super power - a way to see and listen to the world with some degree of mastery in my back pocket. It was the most rewarding of all my activities for I could measure my progress in an easy way. The results were there on paper or canvas and I loved seeing my sketch books fill up. When I drew or painted I was lost into another state that transported me far away from my parents’ squabbles or the pressure to perform in other subjects. I learned early that art was transformational and challenging and had made a huge difference in other artist’s lives. At the Art Institute, we heard stories of artists and how the creative spirit worked for them.

Today, I am still enchanted by the act of drawing and painting. It is my unique voice as much as the way I speak. The inner excitement of capturing a feeling or a gesture has never left me. It has made all the difference in how I have lived my life and has showed up in the choices I have made for work.

I began my career as an elementary art teacher, then an illustrator, a drawing instructor for a junior college and later a graphic artist for engineering firms. In 1988, I married Leo and on our extended honeymoon we delighted in great Italian fresco cycles. On return, I broke from the corporate world and opened my own mural painting business. The big reasons were freedom and a longing to explore color on a large scale like those magical fresco paintings. I took a big chance for I had no real business experience - simply faith that this could work.

In 2009, I started an evening program at the deYoung Museum where I was working daytime as a teaching artist. For a few short years, this was heaven for me, teaching adults who wanted a dive into the world of drawing. It was full circle since I was back in the museum world again. Familiar territory that felt like home.

My current body of work is dedicated in honor of my father, Paul Ewing. When my father died, my new art form - Spirit Boats was born. In using the Spirit Boat, I transitioned from grief to an ongoing celebration of life. I found a new way to express my inner world and in turn work with people. The Spirit Boat is a multicultural and universal symbol of movement - a sacred vessel that helps one access the unseen world and navigate life with metaphysical support. In my paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, I invite people to journey and go deeper to find their own source of power.

Today, I am working with organizational learning and private teaching where I offer creative programs and workshops that include sculptural processes where we make boats and hearts. One of my favorite workshops to lead is Drawing Meditation that gives one a way to relax and find flow. My program in Close Observation is based on conversations where we look at art together to make new meaning and associations that can add vitality and open visual intelligence in one’s life.

My goal is to serve as a facilitator in a number of ways for people to come more alive as they engage with art. I believe that art holds a key for us to deepen our humanity and what we do while on this planet. Art is our earliest way of finding meaning.

I cannot imagine any other way I would have had such a richly rewarding life without the help of my muse. She is there 24/7 and is never judgmental. And this muse is available for anyone who has a willing ear to listen.

 Bio - Jennifer Ewing

Born: Chicago, Illinois

Childhood Art Education - Art Institute of Chicago, IL

B.A. degree - Fine Arts Major - Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL.

Jennifer has worked all of her life in some aspect of art, as a teaching artist, an illustrator, muralist, entrepreneur, and workshop facilitator. Her skills include leading programs and tours for close observation of art works for a variety of audiences, teaching mindful drawing, designing exercises for greater engagement with the world, serving teams to help facilitate access to creative thinking, and producing art from small to large scale murals.

Her 15 years of experience in museum education at the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums and Contemporary Jewish Museum has immersed her in a wide range of art exhibits and programming. Highlights include an adult program for drawing and developing the Artful Discoveries Program in partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association of Northern California at the de Young Museum and offering her unique way of Spirit Boatmaking to their audiences. Her mural business, Ewing and Germano, specializes in fine art services that gives her expertise with residential and commercial applications and managing projects that feed her own personal art. Jennifer continues to develop programs for organizational learning because she is a bridge to help people engage with art to improve better and more heartfelt decision making.

Her major theme for her personal art,“Spirit Boats”, was born in 2005 as a response to the death of her father and is dedicated to his honor. The concept of a spirit boat gives her freedom and access to the unseen world that she uses in her paintings, sculptures, drawings and installations. She has an ongoing dialog with unique materials such as stained paper, drawing over paint and applications of pure pigment that convey a message of hope and mark passages of transforma- tion. Cultures around the world have also found the spirit boat as a way to connect to greater powers and this noteworthy piece is one that Jennifer values as she explores archetypes that invite communication with the ultimate creative spirit.

Jennifer has lived and worked in an historic SF Mission District artist community, Developing Environments, since 1986. She has exhibited her work widely in various Bay Area venues over the past twenty years with solo shows including, Kimball Gallery,deYoung Museum, Living Shaman Museum of the SF Presidio, Gallery 190, UCSF Memory and Aging Center, Think Round Fine Arts and Ruth’s Table. Each exhibition has been designed around a subtheme of Spirit Boats that have included time lines, totems, directions, healing and movement.

www.jenniferewing.com

www.ewinggermano.com
www.howtonavigatechange.com