A warm welcome to today’s Tap-In guest; mixed-media artist, instructor, and author, Jill K. Berry. Her artistic talents and thoughts on creativity, teaching, life, and what it looks like to be brave will inspire you!
Do you think the creative spirit is a collective force?
Very much so. It is fairly easy to feel the effect of it, alone or in congregation with other artists. It is precisely why we do not need to reinvent the wheel in many art processes, and why also we don’t often invent anything entirely unique. We are a small part of a whole history of creative energy that flows around and about us, and makes mysterious and quiet offerings to us that we cannot take credit for. Creativity is a gift from the collective. The great mystery is whether or not we have a say in this. It is my belief that anyone who says “yes” to these offerings receives these gifts.
If the concept of money didn’t matter in this world, would your life look different? If so, how?
I am not overly concerned about money, but having kids exaggerated the “security” worries I did have, for sure. If I were not concerned about college tuition, healthcare and the stuff of a teenager’s life, my life would be quite different. In that fantasy I live in a cottage by the sea, surrounded by wildflowers and big pots of vegetables and herbs. The house would be filled with art and art projects that I would never have to put away. Other artists would come to visit and sleep in the outdoor rooms. We would have bonfires on the beach and paint all day.
What scares you?
Death, health issues, every new thing my kids do, the unknown.
What types of people are you most drawn to?
Curiosity about the world and what wags it is the biggest draw for me. Smart, funny, kind and curious people could fill my house every single day.
Tell us about being brave.
Being brave has nothing to do with not being fearful, rather it is a conscience choice you make, despite your fear, to put one foot forward. New things, especially big new things like teaching for the first time, writing a book and having a child, have been the things for me most worth doing, and also the ones that made me feel woozy with fear. Discomfort comes hand in hand with new territory: one comes to dinner and brings the other with it.
What would an ideal artistic retreat look and feel like to you?
Place is very important to me, especially the integration of indoors and out, so my perfect retreat would have comfortable shelter, lots of windows and a healthy dose of Mother Nature. It would be a place that engages all the senses. The teachers would be indistinguishable from the students, and there would be no cliques or divas. Maybe that makes me an artistic socialist to think this way, but when this happens it is an enchanting, fulfilling experience.
Do you prefer to create alone or with others?
Both. I normally work alone, and I like it that way. That said, I love collaborating with arty explorers, and I adore the energy of a group of motivated creative people, there is nothing quite like it.
How do you like to learn and/or teach? Tell us about this process(es).
I like to learn at a fairly rapid clip, which may come from being self employed most of my life and being very busy, so my classes tend to be like that. There is very little down time, and always a goal of completing a fairly ambitious project. I would also like to truly understand the process I am learning, and for my students to understand the process I am teaching.
Who were you in a past life(s)? Who will you be in the next?
I was Mark Twain’s daughter, Susy. He described her this way “She was a magazine of feelings, & they were of all kinds & of all shades of force; & she was so volatile, as a little child, that sometimes the whole battery came into play in the short compass of a day.” This explains my deep-seated love for all things Mark Twain my entire literary life, and is also a fantasy replacement for the father I had in this one.
In my next life I will be Sister Corita Kent, or someone very much like her. Sister Corita was an artist that expressed her concern for social justice, peace and joy in her work, with great aplomb and abandon. I grew up looking at her work on the walls of my mother’s house, and those pieces still make me giddy. I think I will have to be her without the “sister” part though, since I really like boys.
What do you dream about?
I have epic dreams, full of stories about houses, people, war and cultures of the world. I am almost always a heroine.
You can view Jill’s work in Somerset Studio, Letter Arts Review, Cloth, Paper Scissors, Somerset’s Art Journaling magazine, Drawing Lab (by Carla Sonheim), Interactive Art Workshop (Kim Rae Nugent), Journal It! (Jenny Doh), The Complete Decorated Journal (Gwen Diehn), 1000 Artists’ Books (Peter and Donna Thomas) and various other publications. Her own book Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking was published in November 2011 with North Light.
Her handmade books are in the permanent collections of the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Denver Public Library. Her paintings and artists’ books have been shown in national invitational and juried shows and can be found in public and private collections across the country. She has taught at five universities, Art & Soul, Artfest, Valley Ridge, Artunraveled, and various other institutions around the globe.
Jill feels that art is necessary and should be accessible to everyone.
Where to find Jill:
Visit her website
Her Teaching Schedule for 2013
Hip Hip Hooray! I will be hosting a GIVEAWAY of Jill’s book, Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking, STARTING TOMORROW!!
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