The Art Memento of Jennifer Vento

Here we are now, into June and nearly halfway into the first year of a new decade! It has been a challenging year for everyone, but I wanted to take a moment to celebrate the accomplishments of this year.  Happy Graduation to the Class of 2020! Congratulations to everyone who has a milestone to celebrate. You've worked hard and deserve a pat on the back. I created these owls last year for my daughter's Pre-K class in a different hat color for each child; seventeen kids total. It was so fulfilling to pass along something to celebrate their first major accomplishment. I offer these owls in my shop year round, so if you have something to celebrate, send my a message and I would be happy to make something for you to order!

Though this may be my first post of 2018, after spending all of this year as a mom of three little ones, I have been surprisingly productive in making art. Starting with this post I'll be taking some time to share this year of my life in art. My first major creation of 2018 was a birthday gift for my mother. It is a window box filled with 66 pansies, her favorite flower, all made out of paper and wire. I made each flower to be unique, and hand colored each face. I wanted her to have blooms to enjoy year round and am very happy with the results.

I know that it has been awhile since I have posted on here. Nine months, roughly. But, I have had the best reason to be away. For most of this year, my husband and I were expecting our third child, and two weeks ago, we were made to be the luckiest parents of another little girl. We have been blessed to have two amazing children already and now can count our blessings once more. As 2017 comes to an end, I am grateful for all that the year has brought me, especially my complete family of five. I have no doubt that 2018 will bring great things and hope to be able to share more of this past year's projects, as well as the things that I take on in the coming year. Happy New Year, everyone!

As the year moves along, I have continued to stay productive with my artwork. I have a two and a half year old and an almost six month old baby at home and somehow managed so far to have completed eight paintings at this point (and of course, various other forms of art, including needle felting).  The above painting is my submission for the March SCBWI Draw This challenge. The prompt word is MARCH. I couldn't decide whether to focus on the action of marching, or the month of March. I am a year round type of person, looking forward to each coming season, and excited for the changes that take place. We have been spoiled with a mild winter here in NY, and I was thinking spring thoughts when I came up with this concept. A spring march through the rain. I'm looking forward to marching through some spring rain puddles with my toddler soon!

While January was a month about working and creating, February was the month where the universe told me to slow down. My two year old came down with a mild case of the flu, the first time she has ever been sick for longer than a couple of days. Then, I threw out my back so badly that I was walking around with my top half parallel to the floor. It has been a few weeks on the road to recovery, and I have had to be creative with my parenting. There has been a lot of time spent on the floor doing art projects and I am pushing my baby around the house in his pram, but I am still doing what I can to create and stay inspired. Hopefully the rest of the year will be a healthy one!

I always plan to begin the new year with some time to recover from the holidays. But as usual, the year started off with so much inspiration that I couldn't sit still,  I now have two kids and am at a point in my life where I want to focus on gestures for the people I know who are there when it counts. I decided to make custom paintings for three friends with January birthdays, and these are the results. Each one was created to reflect the particular friend with some of their favorite things. I wasn't sure how successful I would be in creating these custom paintings, but I found the conceptual process to be quite easy, and look forward to creating more this year as additional celebrations come up.