Today, on Small Business Saturday, I’m launching part three of Artists In Jackson – the Magazine edition: 96 big, full-color pages, soft-bound and larger than the hardcover edition, and at an affordable price of only $35.
And here’s a deal: use the code CREATIVE40 until Dec. 1 at checkout for 40% off the price. Get yours at artistsinjackson.com/book.
Hardcovers are also still available! Use the code art517 for $9 off the price.
“Communities need art, so we have to be there. We can’t kill each other off.”
Back when people used to print their photographs, they were kept in albums and hung on walls – a way to remember moments and events through snapshots.
It’s still that way for photographer Ashley Smith. For her, every photo is a memory.
“Every little snapshot reminds me of something,” she says. “It reminds me of the music playing that day, or something we did earlier. It helps me remember and relive my life. It’s a sensory thing.”
And while many people don’t really look at what they’re photographing, Ashley tries to take it all in. The whole scene is important, not just what she sees through the camera’s viewfinder.
That outlook started when Ashley was young. Her dad handed her a Pentax 35mm film camera early on and taught her about exposure and light.
“He was always the designated family photographer,” she says.
When she was starting, Ashley took close-ups of piano keys and flowers. She was making memories.
Now, Ashley helps make memories for others, too. She does a bit of family and wedding portrait work, although she has slowed down on the family photography business because she sees a glut of photographers in the market. To set herself apart, she’s taking on commercial clients, like Allegiance Health, for public relations and advertising campaigns.
“That’s pretty fulfilling. I enjoy doing that,” Ashley says.
Along the way, Ashley had to learn about things like posing subjects and using artificial light to get the look her clients needed. With her commercial shoots, she feels more like a director.
However, learning new techniques is something Ashley embraces, like when she became a graphic designer for her aunt’s newspaper in Stockbridge, or the Jackson Citizen Patriot. From there, she worked at Ray Printing but has recently switched careers to run promotions for McKibben Media Group. She’s a true Jackson native.
“There’s a lot of great stuff to do here, and a lot yet to be done,” Ashley says. “And I want to be part of that. Jackson is my forever home.”
She embraces the collaborative and sharing artistic community in Jackson, especially among photographers. She also works on shoots with local photographer Seth Duimstra and swaps techniques.
“It seems like we have a lot of camaraderie that you don’t find in other places,” Ashley says. “It can be pretty cutthroat out there in the world. But in Jackson, if anybody asks for a photographer, we help each other out and recommend each other. That’s really nice.”
“Communities need art, so we have to be there. We can’t kill each other off.”
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“I don’t want to be a ‘company.’ I want to be underground.”
If you see a random painting tucked away in a downtown Jackson alley, chances are Andrew Hall made it.
It’s one of the ways Andrew gets his graphic paintings out in the world: he’ll drop one somewhere in town with a note on it. If someone finds it (and they do), all he asks is that they support him.
“I lay the guilt on thick.”
Andrew takes his guerrilla marketing inspiration from Michigan music artists of the ’90s. Underground shows and swapping CDs were some of the few ways Michigan hip-hop artists could get their name out in the market.
So Andrew takes his paintings – Captain Jackson, comic scenes, graphic gorillas – and hides them around town.
“Not everyone is the next Andy Warhol. I’ll be who I’m going to be, and I think that’s the way to achieve it,” Andrew says. “I like putting in the effort in the shadows.”
His work is certainly attention-getting. Andrew uses Liquitex heavy-body acrylic paint and canvas to make his art, and the colors pop like a mix of pop art and comic books.
“I thickly coat stuff to get very bright colors into blocks and shapes,” he says. “I want it to look as close to something that was printed as possible. I’m definitely getting there.”
He draws inspiration from comic artists like Frank Miller and David Aja and the screen print work that his dad used to do. For technique, Andrew is totally self-taught.
“I figured it out my own way,” he says. “I didn’t want help. I can learn quicker if you give me the tools and let me do my own thing.”
He learned his guerrilla marketing techniques on his own, too, trying out different strategies, like Etsy stores and Instagram. He also works with Medical Panda, designing pins, shirts, and posters.
The word is starting to spread in Jackson, too, with Andrew getting into shows and collaborating with other creatives in town. The key, he says, is to keep things fresh.
“There’s only so many people in Jackson. And not everyone is going to want to buy your stuff every time,” Andrew says. “If your core audience is Jackson, you do well by having your stuff change frequently.”
Collaboration is one of the strengths of Jackson’s artistic community. Everyone is willing to work together, he says, and promote other artists’ work.
And for Andrew, competition takes on a different meaning in town.
“I’m not a competitive person, but I see other artists as competing to be awesome,” he says. “Just to see their drive, it’s a good thing to apply.”
Andrew says he makes art to please himself first. But it is a great feeling when he finds an audience.
“I like to please people,” he says. “I don’t want everyone to like it, but someone would love it.”
“If my son likes it, I know it’s sweet.”
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“Any way I can express myself, I’ll do that.”
Justine Melville enjoys the process of making: the experimentation, the trying out new ideas, the techniques. Learning something new.
And having something to show for it is a great side benefit.
“Putting the energy into my work – dying fabric, taking the color out, ice dying – there’s a lot to it,” she says. “The process is a good focus for me. It helps calm me. And I really enjoy the product I get.”
It’s easy to get lost in the work. That’s the fun part.
“We’re so busy these days and expected to pay attention to so much that it doesn’t matter. It’s nice to zone out,” Justine says.
As a fabric artist, Justine has found a new way to express herself creatively. She discovered dying fabric after a boyfriend taught her how to screen print.
All it took was trying to tie dye with a mixed berry print.
“Ever since, I’ve been kind of addicted.”
Justine has always been creative, using many media to express herself. She’s tried printmaking and dabbles in photography.
“Any way I can express myself, I’ll do that,” she says. “I felt like, for the longest time, I was a little lost with my creativity. I’ve always bounced around.”
Now that she’s settled on fabric, Justine has found success participating in exhibits, from booth shows to warehouse shows to gallery shows. She has an Etsy store and promotes her work on social media.
The creative community in Jackson has also helped, and Justine has become increasingly involved with other artists in town. She traces much of that collaboration to The Singularity, which introduced her to other open-minded creative types.
“It showed me what can really happen in this town,” Justine says. “We’re very supportive of each other, which is the biggest thing in my eyes.”
She thinks Jackson could better support artistic pursuits and be more open-minded about the kinds of art that are possible in town. She also thinks Jackson could use more community-oriented spaces for artists to work on projects and collaborate.
As someone who has lived in Chicago and returned, Justine doesn’t understand pessimism about her hometown.
“Some people think this town is a black hole. I don’t see that. I think they’re the black hole,” she says. “There’s a lot of people who get out and come back and still enjoy it. This is a nice place to call home.”
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“It’s a good outlet for depression. I’ve always been able to show myself something solid and tell myself, ‘You’re not a bad person. Look at what you can do.’”
It’s funny how life lessons can go awry – like the summer that David Flack’s parents had him work in the shop at the family business, SALCO Engineering.
They figured two summers on the shop floor would make David hit the books and not want to come back.
“The exact opposite happened,” David says. “I fell in love with getting dirty.”
And while the guys on the floor would never call themselves “artists,” David absorbed their craftsmanship and resourcefulness. They taught him how to weld. Now he makes metal objects big and small, and he traces that back to growing up in the shop.
“It’s captivated me since I was a little kid,” he says. “I’d watch these monsters eat metal and spit out these amazing things.”
Amazing things. That’s what he wanted to do. David wanted to be around creation.
After graduating from Albion College in 2009, David started working with his father at SALCO, updating the technology at the shop and taking on design work and estimates.
Then he hooked up with a collaborator, Kyle Huntoon, and started building art pieces- Kyle took on the woodworking, and David handled the steel. They put their reclaimed art in festivals and art shows, traveled the country, and made a good business.
“Kyle opened my eyes to the idea of being a reclaimed artist – of taking junk and bringing it back to life,” David says.
While the pair have amicably parted ways, David took that spirit of junk-to-art and developed his own style. Grand River Brewery had him make their tap handles, and the City of Jackson commissioned him to make bike racks around downtown.
David enjoys making furniture, too, but he’d like to try more large-scale sculptural work in the future.
“I like driving down the street and being able to say, ‘I made that,’” he says.
It’s the making David enjoys, coming from a part of his Midwestern upbringing. He stays on with the family business to preserve the craftsman culture.
“It’s in the Midwest, it’s in our blood,” David says. “We come from this line of people who pull themselves up. After all the auto industry changes, we still have hopes and dreams, and all the knowledge and work ethic is still there.”
Steel is great because it’s a very forgiving material but with limitations. That’s where David finds creativity comes in handy – taking something with an inherent shape gives you pre-defined parameters. The parts of the whole shape his artistic pieces.
“You have to let it come together as organically as possible,” David says.
Much like Jackson. David has seen the artistic community come into its own in recent years, and he’s happy to see it. Enough of the low expectations and lack of pride.
“It’s nice to be a part of the scene where people are going for it and not sitting on their hands,” David says. “I want to try to motivate this city to make it a better place.”
“I want to be visible.”
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I’m super proud of how my Artists In Jackson book turned out. It’s 100+ gorgeous pages of artist profiles and portraits.
As a part of the package, I also made an eBook version. I created it as a more portable companion piece to the book, and it’s available as a PDF and Apple iBook now on the Artists In Jackson website.
I created both the PDF and iBook using Apple iBooks Author. The template format made it super easy to transfer the photos and text from an InDesign document. Plop photos in the picture spots, copy and paste the text, and work on a few formatting things like pull quotes and the table of contents, and you have an eBook. All pretty easy, as long as you’re okay giving up some formatting control.
Just export the iBook as a PDF and you have a format that anyone can enjoy. It really makes it a one-and-done online publishing option.
The book is still the objectified end-point of the portrait project. It’s the artifact, the thing that (hopefully) will last for decades. It’s also, at $89, a bit of a luxury item. Not everyone can afford almost $100 for a book, and I recognize that. The book is still what you should buy, but I get the affordability issue.
So the eBook is only $9. Much more affordable, and priced so just about anyone can read the profiles and view the photos on the go.
Buy the eBook and support the project!
Thanks to Jacksonopolis for the feature and Q&A.
A deeper dive into the how and why of my Artists In Jackson project.
Today I’m releasing my portrait project Artists In Jackson to the world. Since June, I’ve interviewed and photographed 15 Jackson-based artists about their talent, their challenges, and their hometown. The final product is a beautiful, 100+ page book featuring stories and portraits from the artists.
You can learn about the project at artistsinjackson.com. And the book makes a great holiday gift!
Thank you so much to the artists who participated. Through painting, or photography, or metalworking, or tattoos, they’re making my hometown of Jackson, Michigan, a more beautiful place. Support them!
And thanks to all of you who have supported and shared this project.
For the past five or six months, I’ve spent a lot of time getting to know the artists, creatives, and makers in Jackson, Michigan, as a part of my Artists In Jackson project.
The culmination of the project, I always figured, would be a book. Photos and profiles of the artists, an explanation of the project, and a beautiful artifact of all the work I’ve done.
I love photo books. I’ve become a bit of a collector in the past year or so. That, and (as @alesserphotographer advocates) paper is what you keep for 100 years and give to your grandchildren.
So the Artists In Jackson book is now available for sale. I couldn’t be more proud of how it turned out.
This first run of copies (about 25) are going to get some special love and attention from me before they ship out. After that, I’m doing a buy-on-demand system from Blurb, the book publisher.
Also, the project’s artist profiles are now live on the website, along with a selection of photos from each artist’s portrait shoot.
It feels mighty good to have this project out the door and into the world. I’ve received lots of great feedback from family and friends, and lots of support from the community. Thanks to everyone for their time and attention.
I made something. It shipped. And away we go.
Here they are: the 15 featured creatives in my Artists In Jackson portrait project.
They are 15 people that are making my hometown of Jackson, Michigan, a more beautiful place to live. And so generous with their time and attention – I can’t thank them enough for participating in this project.