what is the medium of a painting
Anyone who has abounding any university anywhere has apparent one. It seems as if every architectonics appearance the prototypal account lath layer-caked and overstuffed with flyers for part-time jobs, bookish studies, and lectures.
For bounded artisan Jennifer Shuey, one of those flyers was a life-changer.
Shuey grew up in Hublersburg and accelerating from Bellefonte Breadth High School. As an undergraduate at Penn State, Shuey had explored majoring in diet and psychology, but neither captivated her interest. Still borderline of what her approaching held, she begin a acting home in the Division of Undergraduate Studies. During that time, she saw a flyer for a allocution by the arch of the Department of Mural Architecture. Intrigued, she attended.
Voila!
Shuey says the accountable amount clicked with her and she assuredly had a major, with a accessory in geography.
“I never absolutely advised myself one of the artists of my class,” Shuey says. That self-assessment took several years, a attestation to her apprehensive nature.
The assorted facets of mural architectonics seemed to clothing Shuey’s intellect. She says she was able to get a acceptable accomplishments in architectonics attempt and graphics, which accustomed her to visually acquaint with others.
Once she had her bachelor’s degree, Shuey did not accept a archetypal aisle into acceptable mural and armpit design. Rather, she was fatigued to larger-scale association issues. Her aboriginal job was with the Centre Region Planning Agency accomplishing absolute planning and baptize resource/waste baptize planning for the area.
Her abutting job took her to ClearWater Conservancy, area she served as controlling administrator for about 15 years.
When Shuey larboard ClearWater, it was with the ambition of devoting added time to her art. She confused on to a position as administrator of fundraising and development at the Axial Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, which draws added than 125,000 bodies to State College anniversary July.
“I larboard to do added art, but I backfilled my additional time with added fundraising!” she says with a laugh.
Shuey says she finds art in landscapes and nature. One of her beforehand adventures with art was an oil painting chic at the Art Alliance with addition bounded artist, Jennifer Kane. Shuey begin her adulation of pastels by activity to a bounded artist’s retreat. At the retreat, she met Susan Nicholas Gephart.
Her eyes brighten as she smiles at the memory.
“She loaned me her pastels and said ‘give these a try.’ It aloof affectionate of clicked. It was like, ‘OK, this is my medium,’” Shuey says.
She now has been application pastels for 12 years and is a affiliate of the Axial Pennsylvania Pastel Society.
Art, she says, is her escape.
Shuey describes art as “using absolutely altered apperception muscles. At work, it was either analytic or social.”
Arts allows her to be added alienated rather than extroverted, “being in the zone,” she says, abundant like how athletes are. Her admired painting, of the 120 pieces she has created, is one she fabricated in axial Maine of a cottage on one of the lakes in the fall. Her accepted banal is about amid 40 and 50.
Shuey says that her afflatus to accord to adolescent bodies who are absorbed in art is that “there are so abounding means to accurate yourself. Explore. Don’t get focused on some plan for your activity or your major. I never would accept heard of mural architectonics had I not been exploring.”
She addendum that sometimes bodies are abashed to try. She suggests that individuals should be accessible to possibilities. You may not apperceive why opportunities appearance up in your life, but back they do, say yes, she advises. Even admitting Shuey began her developed activity as a planner, she doesn’t absolutely apperceive what her approaching will be. She is blessed to be activity with the breeze for a while.
Shuey says she uses her art to augment addition passion, acknowledging bounded charities, “to be able to ability to bodies who are confused at an basal akin by the adorableness of nature. Ability them with what moves them.”
She has donated her assignment to a cardinal of causes, best conspicuously ClearWater Conservancy, Millbrook Marsh Attributes Center, Centre Country Farmland Trust, and Mount Nittany Conservancy.
Her art will be featured alongside that of Cinda Kostyak at Cool Beans Coffee and Tea in Bellefonte during November and December. She will additionally be a featured artisan at Schlow Centre Region Library in city State College in September 2018.
“I anticipate sometimes bodies anguish that they don’t apperceive about art or art history, or what it is declared to mean. To me, you don’t accept to anguish about all of that. It absolutely aloof comes bottomward to what moves you, what speaks to you in some way that’s added visceral,” she says.
“You don’t necessarily accept to apperceive why it does. Whether it’s music or a painting, it is acceptable for bodies to be in blow with that claimed and affecting ancillary of themselves and to acquisition means to accommodate that into what they’re accomplishing every day.”
