Profile – Fulton Street Collective

Jennifer Starchvill

Biographical Info I am an artist, artist. I am not tied to any medium so I could never call myself a painter really. Even though I do paint. Maybe I’m a designer first, before artist? My first graphic design experience was in 8th grade when I designed the cover art for the school yearbook. From my initial concept, I had to swap out my hand-drawn bubble letters and choose from a limited selection of approved fonts, and then the color choice process was somehow handed over to the student council president. I had designed the cover with a gold background in mind with black ink for the letters and graphics, matching our school colors. She went with purple with silver ink. How I later spent 15 years in a graphic design career is a mystery. I knew from the start that, that type of work would never be my own yet it was strangely satisfying much of the time. I mostly enjoyed typography and making the message fit the space. The whole time, during any downtime, I was a compulsive doodler. Scraps of paper, meeting handouts, always doodling my random shapes, thoughts, ideas. Once my children were born and I left the life of desk work and meeting tables behind, I needed to establish a system for creating that was tolerant of toddlers. I’ve always loved how a rapidograph pen lays down ink. I found 20 page, spiral bound, 5.5×8.5″ heavy watercolor paper to be the most portable. I also found circles to be very versatile and inspiring. I thought I was going to teach myself to sew and make soft goods for my babies. I also thought making jewelry was fun. I learned how to do off loom bead weaving and wire wrapping. I kept defaulting back to the doodling. So now I paint. I paint my doodles with acrylic on canvas. Sometimes I mix things up and use watercolors with my ink lines. Most of the time they’re whimsical sometimes a little mysterious but I like to think they’re as deep as the viewer is willing to go with them.

Artist Type artist

Location Westmont, IL

Short Description So, basically I use ink, watercolor, or acrylic paint to create representational abstract work inspired by mid-century modern design and a bit of prehistoric written communications (like petroglyphs/cave art, pictographs). I am a scribbly line.

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ghennah

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