ARTIST STATEMENT
As a child many Saturdays were filled with inspirational drawing and painting classes at the Chicago Art Institute instilling a life-long affair with the arts. A former K.S.U. art professor once remarked, my sketchbooks look like poetry. Who would have guessed this observation predicted the weaving of art and poems? Recent adventures involve collecting leaves for monoprints which may be converted into artist books or wall hangings. A world of limitless possibilities opens doors, please enter and linger; together let’s speculate about leaves and dyes!
Currently, I collect and press leaves sandwiched between paper with spices and dyes in boiling waters. While meditating in the landscape, checking the veins of leaves, I find new paths to motivate my creative life. Cape Cod as well as the Cuyahoga River inspires me to plunge into unknowns listening to my instincts within the world of creation. New materials and processes intrigue experimentation and reflection. Come, drool within these prints.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Clarissa Jakobsons, Aurora, Ohio, holds a B.F.A. from Kent State University and has taught various art and writing courses at Cuyahoga Community College, in Cleveland. Her artwork has been exhibited widely including The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Morgan Conservatory, Baldwin Wallace College, Akron University, Bind-O-Rama 20th Anniversary Edition,Notre Dame College, Women Made Gallery, The Artists Archive of Western Reserve, Words/Matter, San Francisco State University, Abecedarium Gallery, and internationally.
Artist, poet, instructor, five-year associate editor of the Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal, Clarissa was twice featured poet at the Paris Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore. She won first place at the Akron Art Museum New Words Competition. Sample publications include: Glint Literary Journal, Hawaii Pacific Review, Lake, Ruminate, Blue Nib, Tower Magazine, Qarrtsiluni, The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, Kingsview & Co, etc. She conducted an ekphrastic poetry workshop at the Cleveland Museum of Art sponsored by the Ohio Poetry Association and taught Ecco-style printmaking at the Morgan Conservatory. Her solo exhibition at the Western Reserve Academy Moos Gallery, Hudson, Ohio combined artist books, poems, and oil paintings. Clarissa enjoyed an Artist Residency at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, a Fellowship with Liam Rector, and the Hans Hofmann Fellowship with Selena Trieff and Robert Henry.
© Clarissa Jakobsons