Jenni Ward ceramic sculpture

Giving Back: A school in Port-au-Prince

August 31, 2015

Jenni Ward ceramic sculpture | projects | Haiti I have been helping with philanthropic projects in Haiti for many years now and have made 6 trips there since the earthquake in January 2010. I have met incredible people, doing incredible things to help the Haitians thrive but one of the most amazing people I have met there is a man named Winter. He lives in the middle of one of the poorest neighborhoods in Port-Au-Prince and has been working tirelessly for years to provide a free school for the children who live there. He is a firm believer that education is still the best way to improve someone’s lot in life. It has been an honor to know him, visit his school and donate supplies whenever I can.

Winter’s school, named Rajepre, has grown enough over the past few years to now require nine teachers, all of whom have been working for free ever since they began. Not surprisingly, the teachers are not certain they can continue this for one more year, and the school will have to close if they leave for paying jobs. Winter would like to pay each teacher $120 for one month’s work, so it will take $3240 to keep the school running for the rest of this year. (A new plan will be considered for next year.)

My friend Kathy Barbro has organized a Go Fund Me page to Keep Winter’s School Open, please consider donating to this drive as every dollar has the potential to be life changing for a child in Haiti. Thank you for supporting education in Haiti!

Making Tools

August 24, 2015 August 25, 2015

Even with all of the gadgets, gizmos and tools you just have to have out there sometimes, you can’t find just what you need and you have to make your own. I’ve seen artists use everything from pool noodles to pipes as they support their work in the wet building stages, but my work needed support in the kiln, which means I needed something that could survive the firing process.

I’ve been firing flanged pieces from my bone series with some good results but I often get a small crack line along the length of the pieces during the glaze firing process. I realized that some more support might be what’s needed to help them survive the firing process with a higher success rate. So I started building some angled clay shapes for the sculptures to rest on. But because the glaze can’t touch anything during the firing, I added short lengths of heavy gauge nichrome wire pins poking out of the clay everywhere. So the glazed piece rests on the pinpoints instead of on the clay support. The result looks like some crazy torture device but so far so good, my new tool appears to have worked its magic. Making the tools to make the art makes artists inventors as well as creators!

Driftwood hunting

August 21, 2015 February 4, 2021

In search of some driftwood for an upcoming art installation, I spent the morning driving up the coast on Highway 1 to a remote area where I thought I might discover some good finds. Typically the driftwood piles up on our local beaches in winter storms but with the two year drought in full effect, winter storms have been non existent and driftwood has been sparse. As normal as its become for me to see the amazing vistas the coast road has to offer, I’m still in awe of being steps away from a major road and just 30 miles from large cities and yet in the middle of summer, there is no one on this stretch of beach. Spending a quiet morning with my dog meandering along, searching for whatever gifts the sea has washed up is a good way to start the day. If you have never driven the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway), you need to add this to your bucket list. I’ve lived here over 15 years and it never gets old, the wild open spaces of California enamor me again and again.

Fingers Crossed

August 19, 2015 August 22, 2015

Off it goes! 200 pieces that make up my Hive Series installation are on the road destined for Artprize 2015. The piece will be showcased at the Calvin College (106) Gallery in downtown Grand Rapids Michigan. Fingers crossed that everything arrives safely AND that it finds a happy home in Michigan, so I don’t have to ship it back!

Flashback Art Attack: newish stuff

August 18, 2015 August 18, 2015

As my 3 weeks on the east coast visiting friends and family wind down to the final hours, here are just a few more images of art from my parents house, minus the stuff I’m just too embarrassed to claim I made and they won’t get rid of. Sometimes its good to see a retrospective of how your art has evolved over time and where influences have been injected into your work and sometimes, not so much. The top image is a silhouette of small pieces from my Sprout Series, I love the way these pieces look against the sky. Below are pieces from my more recent Nest Series and Linked Series, both focus on the connections between organic shapes. Enjoy!

Flashback Art Attack: Super Storm Sandy

August 11, 2015 August 11, 2015

These pieces were made for an installation piece in my senior exhibition in 1998. They were slip-cast from molds I had made of balloon forms and then fired in the salt chamber of the wood kiln to give them their toasty finish. They’ve affectionately been called ‘the bagels’. My parents have had these placed around in their yard and walkways for many years mixed in with the plants. When Super Storm Sandy hit the Jersey Shore a few years ago, my parents home was flooded and many things on their property washed away including these pieces. When the waters receded, debris was everywhere in their neighborhood, from garbage cans to jet skis to barbecues. As they began clean up and find things that were theirs, return things to others, slowly these ‘bagels’ were being returned to them from neighbors who recognized them. I believe that most were found and very few were damaged despite the churning waters they must of been spinning in. I’m always amazed at what ceramics can survive.

Atlantic Art Adventure Photos Are Up!

August 9, 2015

For those of you who have been following my journey of taking sculptures from the Bone Series to the bottom of the ocean…here are the results: Atlantic Art Adventure | portfolio page. I’m so excited to share these with you! And here are a few shots of my husband and I setting the work up on the bottom. photo credit: Herb Segars

about the Bone Series | Atlantic:
The bone series sculptures are abstract interpretations of biological sea dwelling creatures that may have had fleshy fins or other appendages and these bone structures are all that remains. This In the Field installation involved taking six sculptures underwater and documenting them in this environment. The pieces were placed on and around a shipwreck named The Dykes off the New Jersey coastline. Using bones as a reference in my work alludes to concepts of decay and renewal, death and life, interior structures and exterior forms. The shipwrecks share the same references, their disintegrating structures become an artificial reef for new growth to thrive on.

Flashback Art Attack

August 6, 2015 August 6, 2015

You know how your parents keep everything that you make? From the noodle necklace to the funky ornaments they’ve got it boxed up somewhere. My parents are no exception to this rule, perhaps the only difference is that I ended up making a career out of creating, so its a little weird to see value put on the the quirky learning curve of high school and college art projects. Since I’ve been spending a few weeks at my parents house on the east coast this summer, I’ve started to notice just how much of my art my parents have around the house. Here are a few pieces (college friends might recognize some of these oldies!) circa 1997-1998. More to come, Enjoy!

Jenni Ward ceramic sculpture | the dirt | Flashback Art Attack — Remember when I said there was a time when I threw pots on the wheel? These pieces were thrown too after I gave up on making pots.

Atlantic Art Adventure: Dive Day

August 5, 2015 August 5, 2015

The saying goes ‘A bad day diving is better than a good day at work’, this day worked out to be a little of both.

We prepped, we planned, we thought we had all of our ducks in a row and then just about everything we didn’t plan for happened. Every diver had something go wrong at some point from failed gear to forgotten gear to seasick bellies but as a good team always does, we adapted, switched gears and carried on to make it a very successful day diving and working! Have I mentioned that I love my job?

Here are a few images from the deck of the boat to tease you as the underwater shots get processed -I promise you they are worth the wait! In the meantime, check out Herb Segars beautiful underwater photos HERE. Enjoy!

on the deck photos: Wes Dalzell

Prep Day for the Atlantic Art Adventure

August 1, 2015 August 8, 2015

Early tomorrow morning we meet at the boat, load the gear and head out to the Atlantic. The plan is to dive a wreck called The Dykes, an artificial reef off the Jersey Shore about 70′ down (yes there is good diving off the Jersey Shore!) and it’s where new work from my Bone Series will have its next photo shoot with photographer and friend Herb Segars.

In the beginning it seemed like a simple idea, just bring the work down, place it and photograph it but after lots of discussion with my crew (my husband Nate, my parents Beth & Wes and Herb’s wife Veronica) we realized that it was going to be a little more complicated getting us and fragile art to the bottom without breaking anything or putting ourselves in an unsafe situation. So today we devised a packing system for the art that will sink, protect the art, be easy to unpack and repack underwater while wearing thick gloves while remaining safe. This system includes lots of zip-ties, plastic tubs, rope and flexible cutting boards.

Wish us luck on this Atlantic Art Adventure!