My shop will be open in about a month, and I will be featuring new patterns, wall prints, bags, pillows, etc.  I am so excited about this development, and so grateful for this blog for basically compelling me to action.   Did I say I was excited yet!?  I feel like I have just been time-warped back into the days that I just threw caution to the wind and made stuff while zoning out to deep thoughts – totally neglecting homework, studying, an deadlines, thinking really really deep thoughts, writing brave poems and letters, and such.  Yeah, I’ve missed that girl for a while now, and I think she’s making a comeback!  And I feel like my soul is smiling.

I literally have a gazillion ideas and plan to make the following:

• a Beachy/Hawaiian line, (which is inspired by the best memories of my mission in Honolulu, HI)
• a Vintage line
• a Nursery line (little animals)
• a Quote line (favorite quotes)
• a Modern line for everything else that is cool that inspires me

If you all could do me a favor, let me know which of these you’d most like to see in production (down in comments), I’d love that~

Also, I’m making custom invitations for baby showers, bridal showers, baby announcements, weddings, or christmas cards for $25-$35 from now until January, for the holidays (before I go back to school).  If interested, you can show me a a pinterest board of what you like and I’ll customize a print file with you (your event, or family) in mind, with a custom ‘Jones’ artistic touch. Then I’ll send you a pdf and jpg image ready to be sent to the printer with the proper specs (costco, staples, vista print, etc).

Email me at emily.rebecca.welch@gmail.com if interested.

And now, I bring you the Long Story

In college, I struggled to find my niche in the art world…so eventually I just quit.  While my roommate (and best friend) Bayba seemed to have a calling for illustration (she can whip up anything and it looks amazing in less than 5 minutes), my technical and execution skills with drawing and painting were not the best.  I didn’t feel like I had a strong or unique perspective as an artist.  I always felt like I was not edgy enough to present anything truly ingenious (or offensive) that lots of my fellow artists were coming up with, and on the other hand, I didn’t feel like I had anything important or meaningful to express.  I always believed that art should communicate something important to you – but my mind at the time was so overwhelmed with confusion about relationships and life goals that I was basically a hot mess (as I think most girls in their early 20′s are).

Around my junior year I added a major of Sociology to my art major (double majored) because I felt like I did have a strong perspective and I LOVED writing essays for to my liberal college professors about how to look at something from a different vantage point.  I truly enjoyed challenging their ideas and the status quo, and strangely, I enjoyed being in the minority.  I felt like an ambassador for certain principles that are not popular in the field of Sociology, and it gave me a solid thrill to walk into class and lead a discussion and get people to accept or think about a perspective that they would normally just write off at first glance.

However, no matter how hard I tried, I just could not convey the same confidence through art, and frankly, I didn’t see myself excelling with it in the future.  When the time came to graduate from one major, I just let go of the other and walked away from my college experience.

I happened to sign up for a printmaking course about a year before I graduated, however, and it really changed my perspective on art.  I am so glad I decided to do this before I left the art major, because it gave me hope that I could make some pretty beautiful things that didn’t have to say or do anything except be pretty or nice to look at.  There were also many life lessons that seemed to come to me during that time, through that class.  For example, lithography was one form of print making that taught me something I will never forget.  It is the most difficult art form with an exhaustive, extremely detailed process that if you mess up one step, you have to start completely over.  To give you an idea, lithography starts with a stone and you have to physically grind down on it with sand and water and another heavy rotating spinner for a period before you can even begin thinking about using it for anything.  Then there are the acids, the drawing process, the gumming process that you have to repeat multiple times in exact order.  Then you have to get ready to print it – which is another extremely tedious process because the brayer is this big leather rolling-pin that has to absorb enough ink -but not too much ink- that then gets transferred to the litho stone after basically throwing your entire body into it.  Then you roll it through the printing press, and hope for the best.  Suffice it to say, by the time I got to that point, (hours upon hours of work) my stone washed up black on every single print, and the only thing I could do was start over from stracth…and cry.

What I learned from that process was an important life lesson.  Sometimes we don’t follow directions clearly enough and a situation in life comes up completely black.  Our impulse is to justify it, or fight against it and go our own way, or to just deny that it ever happened, or work with the pieces.  However, sometimes you really just have to scrap the entire thing, no matter how vested you are, and leave it in the past as a #FAIL, and then start it again…because unless you want to fail the class (or life), you have to complete the assignment.  And it is totally fine, and people are going to be there to help you start over.  This was key during that semester because I happened to be going through the most completely devastating (so dramatic) heartbreak of all time, and it caused me to question everything I had confidence in.  I needed to know it was okay to do something accidentally, or to invest in something completely wrong and cry about it and go back to the drawing board (or more literally, the litho stone grinding sink) and make a new situation that could work for me.  A completely new situation from the same materials.  And I did.  The next print came out beautifully.  And, my even life got better too…

So, I will never be a lithography printmaker, but I did completely fall in love with nearly every other printmaking form and technique.

I love em’ all…intaglio prints, monoprints, and silk screening.  All of these methods were introduced to me in that class, and I couldn’t get enough of them.  If I had access to a printmaking studio, all of the acids and presses that I need, I would practically live there now.

I don’t regret leaving CSULB with an art major undone.  I suppose I just wanted to wrap up anything art related and combine it with that tough personal rite-of-passage and forget about the whole lot.  Deep down inside though, I think I didn’t finish it because it left me something to go back to someday.  I am proud and happy and grateful for the journey that has basically proven that I can have indestructible confidence in myself and a renewed sense of purpose and joy.  Those young adult life experiences have given me a journey that I can now articulate and appreciate, and now I can have a strong, clear perspective in the art world that I feel happy to now share with all of you.

So, that’s the story.  The long version.

Stay tuned!

-Jones