Signature Artist Series - Jen Norton
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“Art Is My Language:” An Interview With Artist Jen Norton

Diocesan Publications is thrilled to have kicked-off its “Signature Artist Series” with California artist Jen Norton. (You can read Norton’s bio here.) While our in-house artists and graphic designers are very talented, it is exciting to collaborate with artists such as Norton. Even more exciting is getting the chance to speak with her, and learn more about her work.

 

Signature Artist Series - Jen NortonWhat’s your earliest memory of creating something artistic?

JN: Probably age 2, sitting at the kitchen table at my parents’ house.

I was debilitatingly shy as a child; I don’t know what they’d call it today, but somewhere in grade school they evaluated me and said, “She’s retarded.” It could have been anything – something on the Asperger’s spectrum, selective mutism, social anxiety – some kind of debilitating social illness. I didn’t really talk to anyone but my mother for the first seven years of my life.

My preschool teachers figured out I’d be perfectly happy if they put me in the corner with artistic materials and let me go at it. It was the only place I felt safe. It [art] is a part of my being.

I was no child prodigy; my art looked like every other kid’s art. It was about expression; I could express what I needed to express with art. And I could do this on my own and make myself happy without having to interact with other people.

 

As your talent developed, were there other artists who influenced you?

JN: My third “real” job after college was as a graphic designer in Silicon Valley. As a designer, you get these giant illustration books, and on my downtime, I’d flip through them. I admired these beautifully hand-done illustrations. Gary Kelley is one name that comes to mind, and Mary GrandPre who’s done all the Harry Potter stuff.

In terms of art history, the Post-Impressionist period, when people began to really experiment with paint. I’ve gone to d’Orsay and been in the Degas room, staring at one painting for twenty minutes and my husband is like, “What are you looking at?”

It’s when you take the technique and you start to experiment – the color and the experimentation is interesting to me.

 

I know, as a writer, that an artist can find inspiration just about anywhere. You can see a billboard and go “Aha!” What are some of those “triggers” for you as an artist?

JN: Oh, gosh. Just nature. You know, you have the elements of design: color, shape, texture, space, form, harmony, balance … Pattern and color do it for me.

It can be a pattern in a leaf or a flower – those little bits and pieces get into my paintings. Getting out of my own head space, you know. Being an introvert, it’s very easy to be happy and stay happy inside my own head, but when I get out – to the ocean or the mountains – it refreshes you. It gives you new eyes.

I love to read Scripture or read, well, I’m reading this book on Mary Magdalene right now because she fascinates me.

 

During his papacy, St. John Paul II wrote a beautiful letter to artists. He spoke about their role in culture. How do you see your work as not just creating a beautiful “thing” but as a spiritual act?

JN: Art is an emotional language, so just like learning English or Spanish, it is absolutely necessary to learn some form of art (writing or music or painting or whatever) as your emotional expression.

You see so much violence in schools, and we all complain about [the loss of the arts in schools] but we realize it’s not just about “She wrote a great book” or … It’s an expression. For me, it’s in doing the art, working out problems. When it gets to the point where I like it and I think “that’s authentic” – there’s no way you can lie in art. If it’s authentic, it’s from your soul. It’s how you think your way through it.

Our society absolutely has to have a way to express itself on a more emotional level. Most of us have some level of disability of expression – like not being able to have a normal conversation – and we need another way to do it. If people were allowed to do that, if art were held in the same esteem as math and the sciences, recognizing that it’s a different animal but equal, I think we’d have a much healthier society.

Especially in America, we quantify everything by money. How much can you earn as an artist? Well, I don’t know; if you’re creative in how you do it, some make a lot of money. I’m making enough to help pay for my daughter’s college right now. It’s not a lost cause, and it’s not for everybody [as a career.] But to say art is “less” is to deny those who need [the belief that] they are just as important as those in math and science.

 

Much of your art combines the visual with language. This is sort of a “chicken and the egg” question – which comes first for you, the visual or the words?

JN: Like I said, art is my language so it goes together.

Both ways, I guess. There have been times when I’ve been commissioned to do something around a prayer and then I figure out the visual. And there are other ones where the image and the words kind of “gel” together. Or maybe I’ve done the image and I think, “This could use a little more…”

The first Catholic piece I did (because I was doing landscapes and such) came out of a difficult year, and the mantra that kept coming to me was “Let it be.” I felt like it was Mary, like saying a rosary, and it was her saying, “Let it be. Let it be. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be taken care of.”

It’s all different. There’s no format.

 

Obviously, your faith influences your work. How do you stay spiritually  healthy so that  your art continues to be true and beautiful?

JN: Well I don’t know if I do; I just try to stay indoors if I’m not feeling it [laughs.]

It gets really busy sometimes. I do a lot of production work because I sell copies of my work online. But I think for me giving myself time every day to reflect. I get up in the morning, make the coffee, feed the dog, and that’s when I’ll say a rosary. Somedays, I get really distracted: three prayers in and my mind is gone.

I have a daily Scripture reading that come through my email. I’ll try to take that half hour and just enjoy that moment. My mind will start to get busy with things I have to do that day, and I’ll go, “Wait a minute. I get this half hour for me.”

The rest is just day-to-day learning. If you’re trying to do right, and you do something wrong, you think, “Ok, I did that wrong. I don’t want to do that again.”

 

What’s your favorite part of the creative process?

JN: Every time you start, you look at that blank canvas and you think, “Ugh, that’s going to be so much work!”

You have to trick yourself into it. “I’m just gonna throw some color on this…” Part of my style has come around because I don’t want to take a lot of time sketching something out, or do an underpainting. I don’t have that kind of patience!

So I trick myself into it. I throw some paint on it, put some collage on, make some texture. “It doesn’t matter; I can paint over it.” I paint in acrylic because once it dries you can paint over it. So I paint and I get into it and there’s always this one point where I think “I’ve absolutely screwed this up. I have to fix it.” But I have to go through that frustration.

It’s between that point and the final touches that I’m beyond thinking of composition and structure; now I’m just doing textures and palettes and fun colors and balancing things. That’s where it’s much more emotional and intuitive and less thinking. That’s where I get the most enjoyment.

Thanks to Jen Norton for taking time to speak with us. We urge you to visit her website and take in more of her work.

icon
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Icons: More Than Just Pretty Pictures

While iconography is more common in the Eastern rite churches, icons have gained popularity in the West in recent years. It would be wrong to assume that icons are just pretty pictures of holy people; this type of art has a unique intensity to it.

Icons (icon is Greek for image) are two-dimensional art pieces. That gives them their “flat” look, rather than a three-dimensional piece where an artist gives a sense of depth to the piece. The University of Dayton website explains:

[I]cons are not just decoration, but a visual aid for worship and part of the liturgy. Rather than personal works of art that seek to express an individual artist’s view, the icon expresses the historical church, its traditions, and Scripture. They are made and used in an atmosphere of prayer, bringing the people of God into an encounter with his presence. The artist is not so concerned about exterior resemblance to the subject, as to capturing the essence and spirit of the person or event portrayed. Strict rules of subject and technique secure a timeless and universal quality of the icon which expresses the mystery of the divine. Since authenticity is essential in an icon, there are a few classic forms which are repeated, and yet one cannot claim that icons are only copies. They seek to express the one and only revelation of God, inviting the viewer to adapt to God’s manifestation of beauty rather than a human interpretation of it. The process of development is not how to be different, but how to be better.

This explains why icons tend to have a similar “look,” despite who has created them. The creation of an icon is a form of prayer, and icons are meant to draw the viewer into a deeper understanding of the subject. We Catholics would say icons are similar to sacramentals. Iconographer Kristina Sadley talks about the language of icons.

Those who are versed in icon reading are able to decipher spiritual and biblical messages, even in the smallest details of the work.

For example, in icons of Jesus, his halo contains horizontal and vertical lines. These represent the sacrifice Christians believe that Christ made on the cross. Similarly, floral patterns in a halo represent the garden of paradise and would typically be found in halos of angels or saints.

Unlike other religious artwork, icons are created on wood and blessed with special oil.

Sadley said that the ancient process she follows for icon writing has twenty-two steps and requires her to pray and fast. ‘You pray to hear God’s word and put that image out in the world,’ she said.

Jenny Ward, another iconographer, says that icons (unlike most other art forms) are not meant to draw attention to the artist’s skills and talents, but to present a heavenly image that one can meditate upon.

Iconology is a meditative process,” she added. ‘Each layer has such dimension to it that it takes you to that spiritual depth. It’s a prayerful process. Icons become a witness to our faith, and I think our world needs more of that.’

While icons may still be a bit foreign to many Catholics, they can play an important role in one’s prayer life. This “visual theology” gives us yet another way to grow in faith, hope and love.

creation
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God And The Creative Spirit

God is the Ultimate Artist. He – unlike us – can create something out of nothing. And create He does! The natural world is filled with His glory: flowers, animals, mushrooms, sea creatures – we are surrounded by His delight in color, movement, textures. His sense of humor is evident too; all one has to do is watch kittens play or pandas roll in the snow to know that God finds humor in His creation as well.

Despite the fact that some folks think elephants can create works of art, humans really are the only creatures who can purposely create. Some of us create very useful things: we knit sweaters or build a house. Others are blessed with more artistic talents: painting and sculpting and great works of literature. But all human art first, is created out of “something” and second, is a reflection of God’s good creation.

In 1999, during his pontificate, St. John Paul II wrote a letter to artists. It is worth reading regardless of whether or not you are an artist. He tells us what the unique role of the artist is in human culture … and it’s an important one.

Society needs artists, just as it needs scientists, technicians, workers, professional people, witnesses of the faith, teachers, fathers and mothers, who ensure the growth of the person and the development of the community by means of that supreme art form which is “the art of education”. Within the vast cultural panorama of each nation, artists have their unique place. Obedient to their inspiration in creating works both worthwhile and beautiful, they not only enrich the cultural heritage of each nation and of all humanity, but they also render an exceptional social service in favour of the common good.

The particular vocation of individual artists decides the arena in which they serve and points as well to the tasks they must assume, the hard work they must endure and the responsibility they must accept. Artists who are conscious of all this know too that they must labour without allowing themselves to be driven by the search for empty glory or the craving for cheap popularity, and still less by the calculation of some possible profit for themselves. There is therefore an ethic, even a “spirituality” of artistic service, which contributes in its way to the life and renewal of a people. It is precisely this to which Cyprian Norwid seems to allude in declaring that “beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up”. [emphasis added]

St. John Paul II also reminds us that the gift within each artist comes from God:

Dear artists, you well know that there are many impulses which, either from within or from without, can inspire your talent. Every genuine inspiration, however, contains some tremor of that “breath” with which the Creator Spirit suffused the work of creation from the very beginning. Overseeing the mysterious laws governing the universe, the divine breath of the Creator Spirit reaches out to human genius and stirs its creative power. He touches it with a kind of inner illumination which brings together the sense of the good and the beautiful, and he awakens energies of mind and heart which enable it to conceive an idea and give it form in a work of art. It is right then to speak, even if only analogically, of “moments of grace”, because the human being is able to experience in some way the Absolute who is utterly beyond.

Even if we are not schooled in great art or literature, we know when we are in its presence. It creates a sense of awe and wonder. It deepens our understanding of ourselves, the world, of God. Art creates “moments of grace.”

Here is one such moment of grace. Enjoy the beauty of “Kinetic Rain,” an art installation at the Changi Airport in Singapore.