JazWorks

Jill Zaheer's JAZWORKS: A Tapestry of Mixed Media, Painting, Collaborations, Photography, and Poetry

Showing posts with label Veronica Funk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Veronica Funk. Show all posts

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Welcome to the BlogHop!

I was recently asked by Canadian artist  Veronica Funk 
 to participate in a blog hop and I was overjoyed to do so!

  Currently,   Veronica  is  working on a new exhibit for August titled " Sacred Space" which entails acrylic painting on canvas and features the landscape of her youth in Northern Canada. She's also finishing up a couple of articles for publication in the fall as well as working on an online workshop.  Several years ago, I participated with Veronica  and 4 other  talented artists in an altered art book round robin collaborative titled Innerworks.  Another fabulous artist in the InnerWorks project is  Supria Karmaker  who will also be participating in the blog hop  today July 25th. Hope you get a chance to look at her post!


1) What am I working on/writing?

 Currently, I'm working on a new collage for a book being written by an amazingly talented west coast artist.   I'm so excited about it- and hoping to take a few different twists outside my usual style in its creation.

 I just finished a commission for the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai  in New York City to honor the founding chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine.,  Sheldon Jacobson, MD,   Since his passing in June 2009, the Sheldon Jacobson Education and Research Center was created in his honor with a ribbon cutting ceremony held this May 2014.









 I had been asked to create a collage symbolizing his accomplishments and the essence of what he brought to the department.

 Besides being a tremendous privilege to be asked to do this, it was a personal gift to me to honor him in this way. I wanted this artwork to combine some of my favorite components of my prior work in  conveying who Dr. Jacobson was as a person, educator, leader, visionary and compassionate doctor.   These pictures  are  of  my artwork, titled,  Reflections.

2) How does my work/writing differ from others of its genre?
My work consists of a tapestry of symbolism, colors, shapes and a flow of thoughts that I try to weave together- often including segments of my photos, ephemera that has meaning to me, pieces of art that I may have worked on in prior collaborations with artists or art that others have liked. It's my own circle of art-a type of fluidity from one work to another- all encompassing parts of the world around me.

3) Why do I write/work what I do?
 I am driven by nature, how in awe I am of it, and how what I see always looks like a picture. Since a child, I would see shapes and images and designs in everyday reflections, windows, wall papers. I am always inspired to create some sort of connection between nature, my thoughts, words and how they are all tied together.






4) How does my writing/working process work?
I always feel art within me- wherever I go, in whatever I am doing.  My only limitation is the time to express it with the everyday responsibilities I have that priority over the canvas.

And now that you know a bit more about me, let me introduce you to  the talented artist,
                                 
                                                             Deb Eck. 


Below, you can see  one of  Deb's  beautifully created tapestried  art  journals  woven together  in rich olive green and golden tones  of  varied patterned materials  that she donated and I was lucky enough to win at  a Hurricane Sandy fund raiser last year  spearheaded by The Altered Page.

        
 As Deb indicates about herself-- "For many years, I have been fascinated with the discourses surrounding madness and the stories of women historically trapped inside the boundaries of those ideas. Recently I have been further engaged by a resonance I perceived between this discussion and the language  of Victorian design reform.  All of this interest  has been focused through the space of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Yellow Wallpaper",   a work that concerns both the mad women and immoral design... I find there is no way to be outside the  pattern,  that to find a space I must struggle to inhabit the interstices between ornament and flourish.   My work is about finding what lies in this in-between, of living in the pattern and subverting its lines to make my own design.  I find myself drawn repeatedly to work that  requires repetition and the labor of my hands and always to the presence of text and pattern and to making work that inhabits the spaces of the studio and gallery." 

Hope you can visit Deb's blog and Supria's blog  TODAY  when they participate in the blog hop!
 ***


Friday, July 11, 2014

Long Time No See!

It's Been a LonG  tIme since my last Post-
 Almost seems Surreal for so Much tiMe to have GonE by.
So Many Draft Posts  with each one Seemingly  taken a back burner
to the forefront of Life's current Activities.

 



















 Here is a photo I took of sunrise at Ponte Vedra Florida in June.



SO Very ExCited to Be pOsting very Soon AGAIN on an eXciting BLoGHOP I am PAarRTIcipating in WiTh the ever so talented Veronica Funk.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

It's Here- Buried Treasure 2011!

Seth Apter  is sponsoring the 2011 edition of his Buried Treasure collaboration and I'm so excited to be participating. As he indicates "Buried Treasure is about digging deep to uncover some hidden gems. The premise is simple...All participating bloggers will re-post one (or more) of their favorite posts that ever appeared on their blog." I chose a posting  from March 14, 2010 where you can see the  artwork I completed in my  Inner Works Altered Book Collaboration with Seth Apter, Roxanne Evans Stout, Veronica Funk, Supria Karmakar,  and  Rita Vindedzis. It was the most creative, inspiring and exciting  experiences  I could ever have imagined! 

    March 14, 2010

This is my 6th and final posting from our Inner Works altered book collaboration. Today,  I'm showcasing the pages I created from my book  Designs in Nature- retitled from the original book,  
"I Lift My Lamp Emma Lazarus The Statue of Liberty, by Nancy Smiler Levinson. Although the focus of the book details the life of Emma Lazarus, (the writer of the famous words written on the status of liberty:
 "Give me your tired, your  poor your huddled masses yearning to breath free,  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest  tossed to me, I lift my lamp besides the golden door ")
 the power of nature, its beauty and connection to our soul is woven throughout the story.
This is the original book jacket-
And this is my altered book cover.
This is my new version of the book's spine.
And highlights of my inner pages.






The Back Cover below included  tree branches I created from Hawaiian wood. 
Here are a few of my  photographs  depicting nature's most beautiful faces which inspired both the artwork within my book and my connection to the world around me.










   Nature is one of the most awe inspiring, magnetizing, captivating entities I know. 
Powerful, magical and like poetry, it touches all of our senses and provides us with an incomparable wonderment throughout our lives.





Thursday, February 11, 2010

Sharing Our Friendship: Chapter 2

Here is the second of my 6 posts showcasing our Innerworks Altered Book collaboration.  It's time to share the artwork that Veronica  Funk of Simple Pleasures and I created in each other's books! Veronica discusses  how she began her pages   here.  They are so graceful, overflowing with beauty, the poetry that it speaks and the endless dreams in nature's delight.





Here are close ups of the beautiful paintings above.









Thank you so much Veronica for these flowing pages of nature at its very best!
                                                            
                                                             ####

And here are my pages in Veronica's touching book on Friendship!




  Here, I celebrate the friendship that has formed among  each other in our Innerworks Collaboration. I've made miniature replicas of our altered books on one side, and as you can see,  pictures of us on the other side so you can meet the artists!


True friendship involves the merging of energies between two people, trust and tremendous and unending courage  to reveal ourselves - not just our outward best, but our vulnerabilities, our fear,  and our insecurities.




 The very best part of friendship is when love develops--with understanding and patience,  with the need to accept differences, conflict, imperfection in one another and the ability to challenge each other to develop our "moving" best.  We all must change- just as each day brings new experiences to us,  to enhance ourselves to continue to expand what we see, how we view our world, and the colors that we create within it.   Friendship is like a breathtaking rainbow!


Never wait to tell someone you love them. 
 Happy Valentine's Day!
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