Krampus Christmas

Happy holidays everyone!

I've been working on some fairly long term projects recently.

This holiday season I will be sending out a little Snail Mail gift envelope of little stickers and such to those of you on my mailing list.

Just add your self to my (E-mail Signup) http://eepurl.com/CZ0Tr with your address before 12/14/2013.
(I will only ship to US mailing addresses)

For my holiday card I've been doing a little bit of research on Krampus.
Here is the finished card:

Krampus is a goatish devily creature from German folklore. Krampus acts as Saint Nicholas's opposite. Insted of rewarding good children with presents he punishes naughty children swatting them with switches and rusty chains before dragging them in baskets to a fiery place below.

Krampus grew to be a part of many familys' Christmas traditions.  In the late 1800's, the invention of color printing and postcards wound up making Krampus a Christmas icon.  German-speaking people around the world took to sending their friends and children postcards that featured the Krampus.  The postcards would often read;  GRUSS VOM KRAMPUS, meaning  Greetings From Krampus.  The message was intended to be a humorous reminder to be good.

Who is Krampus?

 

In these regions it also became fairly common for the young men of the town to dress up and run through the streets. Whenever the first people decided to dress up as Krampus, they would have created a monster defined by whatever easily available materials could be used for a startling effect. In some cases those materials were the horns and pelts of mountain goats, and in others, straw or hay set aside as winter fodder. Today, though some costumes may be produced by mass production, they still imitate the look established by materials regionally available in Alpine valleys.

Their traditional costumes and masks are elaborately handcrafted. Krampusses can usually be encountered on and a few days before December 6

The Truth About Krampus

Atlas Obscura

 

Krampus Run

Europe's Wild Men

National Geographic

Beard of Moss

For the children of the Alps, Krampus isn't purely a figure of terror. No, he's also a sugary treat, factoring into a whole host of traditional chocolates, cookies and breads.

http://www.gragger.at/?s=krampus

http://www.zauner.at/english/backstube

 

Decorations from Salzburg 

The Caked Crusader 

 

Croshame Krampus on Etsy

If you like Krampus, I recommend the movie "Rare Exports"

All the best winter wishes and holiday traditions!

-Jen

Marceline Painting for Desert Bus

Desert Bus for Hope

My most exciting announcement this Winter is the auctioning-off of the Marceline painting I donated to the Desert Bus charity.
I was working on this fancy oil painting for the majority of the Summer and am really happy with the final piece.
 
Desert Bus for Hope combines video games and tedium to benefit charity. Desert Bus started in 2007 by internet sketch comedy group LoadingReadyRun. This year they will auction off and giveaway about 300 prize lots. These items are nerdy-game related and crafty items. I have spent the last few years following their live video stream and auctions and I'm so happy to be participating in the auction this year.

Check out the painting here

The auction Starts:

06:00PM PST, Nov 19th

Mauzer and the Guttersnipe Warriors

Recently I have been inspired by the old-timey street gangs of London (something along the lines of Oliver twist). I have been watching a lot of Sherlock Holmes, Ripper Street, and doing some on-line research. There is something so grungy and primal about of the stories of those children that have been dealt the worst hand and manage to scrape and claw their way through the muck of London. Ripper Street is very similar to the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes with beautiful movie sets based in the 1800′s. “Ripper Street” offers high budget filming locations and consuming that are dressed superbly in city soot.

In my searching I discovered a new show, Peaky Blinders. It looks like it may just be my cup of tea. This is BBC2's new epic British gangster period drama. The story follows of an infamous street gang, a terrifying Brummie mob who ruled the industrialized areas of Birmingham through the 1880s and early 1900s.

For a recent show, (Story Time) at the Monkeyhouse gallery, I created a character that was very much inspired by these shows.

This is Mauzer he lives in city a similar to 1920’s London. Mauzer is a “mouse hunter” he finds mice that are down on their luck and recruits them to join his Guttersnipe Warriors gang.

This group of misfits live on the dirty city streets banding together to make their way in the world. They sometimes fight crime, but they are also known to fight for scraps of fish by the docks. Mauzer’s lady-friend is Kitten-has-claws, she is a strong-willed spirited lady that is a pro at the slight-of hand.

When they travel to other cities, or need a little extra cash they will operate a side-show circus. This mouse gang will use their various street-smart skills to impress the carnival attendees.

In the future I may make a comic out of these characters, there are so many great stories to develop!

Boston Arts Festival 2013

The fall-sale season and the Boston Arts Festival are rapidly approaching. My summer efforts are coming together and I'm getting paintings all packed up and labeled for next weekend.

Boston Ahts Festival

This will be my first sale of the Fall season!
The festival will showcase of over 50-juried visual artists from the Boston area as well as a performing arts & interactive arts program.This year do not miss:
 
Aug 31st. At 9:00pm fireworks display.
and the grand opening of the new carousel.
 
• Boston: Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park
• Sat, Aug 31st – Sun, Sep 1st, 12 – 6pm. 

 This year I have titled my series of works "Fly Away home" most of the paintings in this series developed from exploring the idea of home, connections and travel. Most of these paintings continue to include wild woodland girls and fuzzy creatures.

Over the summer I've been continuously working on numerous projects and trying to finish up a little Graphic Novel. As practice for my fancy comic my husband (Tomas Swift) and I have been working on a few quick storyboards. I have compiled these little comics and some sketches into a new photocopied zine project that includes all kinds of nifty animals, words and mini story-lines. I'm excited to announce it's debut at the Boston Arts Festival.

For my Fall sales I will also have a new set of pin-back buttons, frog stickers and the limited edition fancy prints from my Kickstarter.

-hope you can stop by.

Flour Sack Dress

I was working on my mini-comic last month and I came across some interesting information on my visual research journey. (The comic is almost done and in its final stages of being buffed up a bit)

I wanted the little farm children in the comic to be very poor, wearing flour sacks for clothes. In my imagining flour sack dresses were just joke clothing (nothing anyone ever really wore). I was surprised and delighted to find that during the depression and the dust-bowl numerous farm families made dresses out of flour-sacks. The grain and flower companies became aware that their bags were being used as clothing and they began to print their bags with colorful patterns. Some of these clothes made out of these bags highlighted the flower logos and other dresses were intricately sewn pieces of art.

Floursack

                                                                    FeedSack Fabric

                                                   A Feedbag Dress from FreePeople

                                                 A Modern FlourSack Dress By Liz Alig
Floursack on Etsy

Beautiful Patterns

Spring to Summer

Classes are out for the Summer!

Time to start some more projects.

I have just added some more work to my Etsy:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/jenniferlewisart?ref=seller_info
and, I will add more work soon.

My work is also featured in the May/June issue of Artscope, along with some of the glorious ladies of the Paint Pens in Purses collective, (founded by Shayna Yasuhara) ( Allison Bamcat, Veronica Fish, and Elizabeth Siegel) If you are in the New England area, pick up a copy for your collection.

-Keep in touch
-Jen

Paint Pens in Purses

I've just been featured on the Paint Pens in Purses Tumblr:
http://paintpensinpurses.tumblr.com/

Paint Pens in Purses is a female artist collective that started in Boston.
It was founded by Shayna Yasuhara and includes some of Boston's best pop lowbrow and illustration artists including Tofusquirrel, Allison Bamcat, Veronic Fish and many more. Recently The group has now grown to span Boston, New York and San Francisco.

Free Stickers

"Like" my Facebook page and I will randomly select 5 people to send free stickers to.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jennifer-Lewis/33441190820?ref=hl

Froggies and Studio View

I've been working on tons of Kickstarter projects, what fun!
My art tables are filled with piles of little robot sketches, frog stickers and postcards.
I've also been working on some studio photos for a FPAC blog interview.

Recently I had a short interview on Questioning Creatives.
Also I have opened up a web shop at Society6.

Some sneak peeks: