Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Love Gironda.
Jennifer, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I am a North Carolina native on my second stint here in Palm Beach County-I lived here from 2009 to 2020, moved back to NC and I returned to Palm Beach Gardens in July 2022. There is just something about south Florida that feels like home for me and I am really excited to be back.
My background is in art education and textiles. I earned my BFA and MAEd from East Carolina University. I am in my twentieth year of teaching art. I have taught at all levels and currently teach grades 9-12 2D art, and Drawing & Painting at William T. Dwyer High School in Palm Beach Gardens.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think my biggest struggle has been balancing my teaching career with my artistic practice. We moved to Florida in 2009 after grad school and I threw myself into my teaching. I didn’t know anyone yet, so I spent my time planning lessons and learning to write grants. I felt like I was excelling in teaching art, but I really wasn’t making any of my own art. I didn’t know what I even wanted to create, or where to even start. I challenged myself to create a piece of art every day in January 2012 and honestly, I haven’t looked back. I just keep making the work. As Andy Warhol said, “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” Each month I work around a theme: sometimes it’s based on an event, like an art exhibit, sometimes it’s based on certain art materials or a motif. Each day is a chance to continue an idea or start something new. Working in this manner, a piece a day within a monthly theme has helped give me structure – which works for me, as I am very regimented. There is also an accountability factor- my friends, family, and even my students know that I create work every day and ask me what I am working on- and I always have something to tell them about.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
For at least the past five years my work has been more focused on fashion illustration. My earlier works from 2012-2017 featured faces, both realistic portraits and my ‘big-eyed’ whimsical girls, as well as months where I experimented with jewelry and small-scale 3D works. Somewhere around 2017 I really began working more with fashion figures, working to develop my own style characterized by elongated forms, long necks and limbs, black line work, and an exaggerated lash detail. I basically set out each month to tackle my monthly theme but to ‘make it fashion.’ I often work with watercolor and pen, but I like to experiment. Two of my favorite materials to paint with are coffee and wine, combining them with colored pencil for the linework. I exhibited a collection of my wine fashion illustrations in a solo show at Eissey Campus Theatre at Palm Beach State College in October and also at Continuum Art Fair. I will also be having two solo shows later this spring- one at the Boca Raton library, Spanish River location and also again in the lobby of the Eissey Campus Theatre in addition to a feature at Zero Empty Spaces Palm Beach Gardens.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Right now, I think that success is having the time, ability, and the drive to get up every day and keep making art, and having the right people around to keep me motivated and inspired. Also, one thing that I am celebrating as a more tangible ‘success’ right now is having a studio space at Zero Empty Spaces in Palm Beach Gardens. This is the first time that I have had a space for creating my art outside of my home and classroom. I have a space to not only create work, but to meet with collectors, teach private lessons (hello- hit me up!), and also, I get to be a part of the community of artists in this space.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jenniferlovegironda.com
- Instagram: @artbyjlg
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jennifer-Love-Gironda-Art/179449285445745
Image Credits
ZES Studio
Quinn Miller
