Today, we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Love Gironda.
Hi Jennifer, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Hi, I am excited to be back. Thanks for checking in on me!
I feel like I am a Florida native, to be honest, but I am a North Carolina girl, and I have the accent to prove it. I first came to South Florida in 2009 when my husband was attending his doctoral program at Florida Atlantic University. I am an art teacher by trade- I have been teaching for over twenty years, and I love it; it is truly my calling. I taught art at Indiantown Middle School that first year when we arrived in Florida, and I stayed there for several years. I finished up teaching at Lake Worth High School, and then everything changed – yup, the pandemic.
I moved back home to North Carolina in 2020, which was actually always the end goal when we first came here – but I couldn’t stay away from Florida, so we’re back! Currently, I am the art teacher at Chaminade-Madonna College Preparatory (CMCP), a Catholic school in the Marianist tradition. I teach 2D Art one and two, Drawing, Painting, Ceramics, and Advanced Placement Art. It truly is a community, and I feel blessed to be in this school. I just finished up my first year here at CMCP and to be honest, it feels like I have been teaching here my whole life (thanks for showing me that ‘radical hospitality’, Lion fam!).
One thing about me that is unique to my story is my daily art journey. In January of 2012, I started making art every single day, and well, I just never stopped! I have over 4,000 consecutive art-making days under my belt- and I currently work out of my art studio nestled in the back of my CMCP classroom (and anywhere I am, really). I love having my studio at school because I am able to share my work with my students from my archives and show them that I am as dedicated to my own art as I am to their learning. I am an artist AND an art educator.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story. Has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
This past year, I really had a major struggle in my creative path- my health. I started having intense back pain, like a knot feeling in my upper back. Turns out it was a pinched nerve. I have never in my life felt pain like I was experiencing, I went from feeling pretty healthy and active to not being able to sit, stand or lay down comfortably.
I couldn’t sleep through the night, would wake up in pain, and became depressed in addition to the back pain. There were nights when I just cried on the couch because nothing was taking the pain away. As if it couldn’t get any worse, I began to have numbness in my left arm and hand- and that is my dominant hand. I was having trouble gripping my pencils and paintbrushes – and that is when I almost gave up. I was ready to end my twelve-year-long daily art streak at that time. Thankfully, my husband John would not let me quit and encouraged me to keep going for the month of November, and I am so grateful to him for that.
I knew that to keep making art with the back pain I was still struggling with, I would need to modify my approach to making my art. I have been focusing solely on fashion illustrations for several years now, and I just could not grip the pencil because of the numbness I was experiencing. So- I pivoted. I decided to work outside of my comfort zone and create small abstract pieces for December and January, focusing on colors and textures- two of my favorite things from my previous life as a textile student at East Carolina University. And you know what? I made it. I do the art every day, and I really love those pieces because they still represent me as an artist, and they remind me of my ability to persevere.
Originally, I made those pieces thinking I would go back into them at a later date and use them for new fashion illustrations – but I love those pieces just the way they are. These works remind me to be grateful for my gift of making art and for the people in my life who helped me to stay on my art-making path- my husband, family and friends, my acupuncturist Dr. Ilyas Hamid (Balance Integrative Medicine in Hollywood) and my chiropractor, Dr. Maria Lopez-Aquino (100% Chiropractic in Davie).
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Fashion is my thing. I love it. I have focused on creating fashion illustrations as my daily art since the end of 2019, before that I would work with portraits some months but I still mixed in some fashion themes from 2012-2019. Each month I take a theme and apply it to fashion illustration. For instance, I have revisited butterflies many times over the years, that is a favorite theme- so I took that and made it fashion. Barbie?
Yup, Barbie-inspired fashion illustrations. I love holidays and often include those in my themes, whether it’s Day of the Dead fashion figures or pink and red garments on my figures in February- I have fun with my art. Case in point- my wrestling-themed pieces (yup, I said WRESTLING, I love it!). I just showed a selection of those at Bear and Bird Gallery upstairs of Tate’s Comics- which was a full circle moment for me because that was one of the first places I participated in a group show when I first moved to Florida over fifteen years ago.
I am proud of my commitment to making daily art- but above and beyond that, I am even more excited when I have an opportunity to inspire others to make time for their creative selves. I have had the opportunity to do this in several settings, one of my favorite was presenting for the Florida Art Education Association at their state conference the first year we moved back. I presented my experience creating art every day and also discussed ways to infuse the K-12 curriculum with fashion based on my own experience.
To talk with other educators and hear the excitement in their voices- made me realize I was where I needed to be, with my peers. In addition, I have a fun Mixed Media Fashion Illustration workshop that I facilitate. I have given this workshop to the Florida Art Education Association, the Norton Museum of Art, and Broward College since I moved back to Florida, and I am always excited to share what I know (so hit me up!).
So, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you before we go? How can they support you?
Have you heard of ‘plays well with others?’ That’s me. I love to collaborate with other artists, so feel free to reach out. I am always looking for groups to teach my Mixed Media Fashion Illustration workshops and also talking about my approach to making art every day, believe me I have some tips!
I am ‘newer’ to the Broward area, so I am definitely looking to expand my network of friends who are artists. I have such a strong network back in Palm Beach County, which I miss.
To support me as an art educator, I am always taking any kind of miscellaneous art and craft donations for my students and our Art Club and National Art Honor Society and for our various service projects. I especially love magazine and old greeting card donations and fabrics- those are like GOLD!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jenniferlovegironda.com
- Instagram: @artbyjlg
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenniferlovegirondaART/
