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THE ARTIST
JENNIFER MITCHELL
Artist Jennifer Mitchell relocated from Portsmouth to
scenic and historic Warner,
New Hampshire,
which is known for its
artists and
writers.
She lives with her husband, nine year old son, a shaggy terrier,
Giant
Schnauzer,
and a Standard Schnauzer. Her
studio, with its
mountain
views, is
located less
than a mile from Warner Village.
She is a juried member of the
prestigious League of New Hampshire Craftsmen
which
supports New Hampshire's finest craftspeople while
simultaneously educating an audience for
their work. Artists are juried through the League's
rigorous Standards Program.
Her hanging glass mobiles are whimsical, artistic, balanced and colorful.
The glass art continues
to evolve as she experiments with new
techniques and glass. She also creates glass flowers and works
with kiln fired, slab, stained and
blown glass. Each piece of art is uniquely handcrafted and
designed for
balance,
sparkle and beauty.
She has displayed her art at select arts and crafts shows in
New
England
and in high-end galleries.
She has designed mobiles for
customers throughout the United States, Europe and
Australia.
Her work has
been featured in, and on the cover of, an arts and crafts book
published by
Lark/Sterling Books, a division of Altimont Press and in Niche
Magazine.
The Fellas
By
Gary Dennis
Union Leader Staff
ROM
HER NEW Warner hideaway, Jennifer Mitchell is bringing
beautifully balanced light into the homes across the world
through chunks of glass. Mitchell’s world is all about
balance. But while so many today try to achieve some sort of
equilibrium as they multitask and fill their daily schedules,
the balance Mitchell guns for is a little different.
Sure, she balances time and attention
among her husband, young son and the “three fellas” –
that’s a shaggy terrier, giant schnauzer, and a standard
schnauzer.
Another balancing act was weighing a move from busy
Portsmouth
west to the artsy
and hilly
village
of
Warner
that she hoped would
act as inspiration for her craft. The scales tipped in favor
of the westward move.
Artistically
speaking, she poises and balances the aforementioned glass
into mobiles structures and shapes, gently terracing the
colorful blocks on lengths of brass rod so as to keep absolute
gravitational symmetry. The mobiles hang perfectly straight,
describing her success.
Some hang in the windows of her new handsome home in Warner.
On this bright day sunlight dances through them, adding a
decorative dimension to a room with white walls and minimal
color.
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Her training? None really, aside from learning how to work
with stained glass from a friend a few years ago. Then it was
the mere observation of other mobile crafts she’s seen at
gift shops and the like. It was kind of trial-and-error
education that lead to her pieces now.
A college degree – animal science, from the
University
of
New Hampshire
– never came into
play.
She, husband Robert Gainor, and son
Aidan, have lived in Warner for four weeks on a short country
road just a stone’s throw from town. So far they love it –
the property size is 15 times bigger than the small postage
stamp slice they owned in
Portsmouth
.
Mitchell is quick to point out
happily that a snowmobile trail goes right by the house – a
feature some might consider a negative. The views from the
several windows around the house are the hills that surround
Warner. They’re country now – and they love it.
Before Aidan was born, Mitchell was
an office worker at a law firm. Her foray into the artistic
glass world was made possible by her decision to be a
stay-at-home-mom. Young Aidan has some of mom’s artistic
qualities – “He draws rocket ships,” she says with a
chuckle.”
She’s being modest about her boy. At
the ripe age of 7, Aidan has already shown an interest in his
mother’s work, and has already learned how to cut and grind
the glass himself.
“Aidan
is a very creative and focused little boy – I am so happy
that he’s able to express himself artistically,” Mitchell
said.
He recently designed a wire and glass
fish by himself, bending steel wire until he got the desired
shape. Then he added brightly colored glass to it and attached
it to the steel frame. And he then sold his piece to Mitchell
for $3.
“If I worked really hard at this I could make a good
living.” She said. But she doesn’t need or want to
- husband Robert is a lawyer in Concord
and she really
doesn’t want her Jemglass Studio business to outgrow the
studio she’s made atop her new two car garage.
It’s in that small space where she keeps her tools – a
band saw, wet blade tile cutter, hammers, chisels, soldering
equipment. She takes the chunks of glass – its called Blenko
glass from
West Virginia
and
Kokomo
glass from a town of
that name in
Indiana
– and thins them
out and then scores, cuts, shapes and sands them.
She
surrounds the edge of the glass with copper wire and then
solders a bead of lead around that. The lead allows her to
connect the glass to other colors of same to create her art.
Then
there’s the balancing act. She starts from the bottom,
hanging her glass creations on opposing ends of a thin brass
bar. Then she connects a wire to the bar wherever it allows
the glass of different weights to balance horizontally.
She
connects that wire to another bar and does it again working
her way up. The result is the multi-tiered mobile; most go
about three or four levels high.
An
average mobile from Mitchell will sell for $32 – “You can
find ones similar to this (made by others) at $3,000,” she
said.
Her
mobiles are made up of every color and pastel. They’re
composed of arbitrary shapes – circles, triangles,
squares.
Creating mobiles is quite a balancing act
MOBILES
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(Continued
from Page F1)
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Some
pieces aren’t even mobiles, rather they’re sand-alone
pieces like flowers. Recently her www.glassmobiles.com web site –
where she gets all of her business now – landed her an order
of 35 of those pieces with the Clairol hair products company.
“They used them as gifts to
send along with press information, “ she said.
Another marketing firm just
approached her and wanted a 4,000-piece order for similar
purposes – she turned them down.
“Four thousand by the end of
April – ay, ay, ay,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to get
too big . . . this is my handiwork. This is what I do. But I
would like to go huge with the pieces them-selves.”
She’d welcome work creating a
large-scale version of her mobiles – “Like if a hotel
lobby wanted something like that I’d do it,” she said.
Something else that will likely
keep Jemglass Studio a small one person operation: Mitchell
isn’t a highly social animal. Husband Robert is, though, and
he’s more for turning her talent for working with glass into
a money making operation.
It was mainly his idea to move
out of
Portsmouth
, an idea she agreed with after the taxes on their
home and tiny plot of land went up more than $3000. And he’s
the webmaster” as she calls him, who markets Mitchell’s
work on the internet.
It was the Internet site where
she was noticed by Marthe Le Van, an author who penned
“Simple Glass Crafts” that features Mitchell’s work. She
also appeared in another glossy magazine “Niche,” a guide
for “progressive retailers.”
She’ll custom make the pieces
for those who contact her through the site. She’ll shape,
color and size any mobile according to any specs.
Warner is a great place to do
this kind of work., she said, even though she’s yet to
explore the town’s artistic social scene.
“Warner is home to over 125
businesses, artists and artisans” reads a pamphlet/map for
the town. And starting four weeks ago, Mitchell makes it more
than 126.
Showcase Magazine - 3/23/00
Going
mobile with Portsmouth’s Jennifer
Mitchell
By JL
STEVENS
Showcase Editor
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| Artist
Jennifer Mitchell in
her Portsmouth studio.— |
Designing
a mobile takes care, creativity and most importantly
balance. If the right side doesn’t jibe
with the left side, your
construction is for naught. Balance is also the key to
artist
Jennifer Mitchell’s life right now, as she keeps her craft, family
and creativity in
pleasant equilibrium.
Graduated from UNH with a degree in Animal Science,
and
having done a stint as a waitress at The Stone Church
when her
brother Eric Mitchell was part owner, the former
office manager
is now a full-time mother and mobile maker.
To be fair, she does other
things with her spare time and
makes other items from glass, besides her
marvelous mobiles.
After the birth of her son Aidan Mitchell Gainor, she
planned to
return to her job as office manager at a local law
firm. That was
five years ago. "I’m trying to avoid
the work world," says the
denim-clad artist. "This is my way of
staying home."
She
still has her original inspiration hanging in her
kitchen.
It’s a mobile made out of glass by a New Jersey
artist, the
state in which Mitchell was raised. Her mother fell in love
with
the mobile,
many year’s ago, and bought it for her daughter.
About
two year’s ago, Mitchell took basic stained glass
lessons with friend, Jeff Haus, and was hooked. The
mobile
making she picked up on her own by visiting glass shops and
gleaning advice from kind souls. "I
just started doing it because it was fun to do,"
says Mitchell of her foray
into the fragile art. Her first mobile shines in a
window off her kitchen, and she is quick to point out
its
flaws. "I was very sparing with the glass,"
says Mitchell. Unsure how to balance each piece, she
made
shapes identical to each other for weight and
counterweight. Mitchell has since learned the key to
balance is working from the bottom up.
"It’s
very physical working with glass. You have to grind
it, you have to wear goggles, and there are
chemicals," says Mitchell, demonstrating her
actions with her hands. She has to grind the shapes,
smooth the edges and clean and then fill them with
copper foil. "I like round shapes," Mitchell
says.
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| “A
mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with
the joy of life.”— Alexander Calder |
Her mobiles are either pastel — different clears,
champagne, pale pink, blue,
green or bright — or more intense jewel colors such
as red, teal and bright green.
There’s a palette for every season.
"It’s
very seasonal work, with the season seeming to start
earlier and earlier
this year," Mitchell says. Last year, she began
working in February, but there are
always craft shows to apply to. In December, her work
was featured at the
Strawberry Banke Craft Fair and at the Button Factory open house,
where mobiles
sold
out before the second day. This year, so far, the
artist has been
accepted into several high-end shows, including on May
28 and 29; Crafts at the
Playhouse, Ogunquit Playhouse, Route 1, Ogunquit,
Maine on June 17; Art in the
Park and York Art Association, Moulton Park, Route 1A
York Harbor, Maine, on
Sept. 16. And of course, her mobiles can always be
found hanging on her Web
site, managed and updated by her husband Robert Gainor) at
www.glassmobiles.com.
When
asked whether her art is called "kinetic,"
Mitchell laughs. "That’s what my husband
calls it. I call it whimsical."
Whimsical also describes her other glass creations: flowers in
wonder jewel tones
and pastels. Her bouquets don’t smell delightful like the flowers seen from
her studio come
spring, but they are just as beautiful.
She has recently completed her first
order placed over her Web site. It’s a stained glass
window panel with beiges, browns and whites in
Job glass, which is glass woven in streams.
The panel should make its owner in Illinois, who has
only seen a prospective image via the World Wide
Web, very happy.
One
of the nicest responses Mitchell has received from her
art also came via the Internet.
A woman ordered a mobile for her husband and he
wrote an email to Mitchell. "He thanked me
and said he started crying when he opened it, it
thrilled him that much." Then there was the
in-person
reception her work received at one show. "Probably
one of the best (responses) was someone whose
father recently passed away. Her father used to make
glass mobiles and she said, ‘I’ve never seen
anyone make them. I’m so excited.’"
Mitchell
uses many different types of glasses with names such
as Yakain, Uroboros,
Youghiogheny and Wismach. She uses a circle
cutter and handcutters. And she never makes
mistakes. "Oh yeah," corrects Mitchell, laughing, as
she points to various piles of glass in her studio.
"Some I’l
l reuse,
some I’ll just donate to my husband."
Husband
Robert Gainor is a lawyer and college professor, and
he makes steppingstones out of Mitchell’s "mistakes" and leftovers. You can spot his
treasures lining the stairway to the family’s
Portsmouth home. Son, Aidan Mitchell Gainor, is also artistic, "he
is 4 and he likes to draw shapes on glass for
me." He also draws books. Mitchell
is also from a semi-artistic family and always dreamed
of owning a craft store when she was little. "I think this is my niche," Mitchell
says.
Thankful
for her husband’s support, Mitchell is quick to
point out their key difference. Mitchell is
shy. Gainor is not. "He’s really talkative and
robust and he really markets this. He pushes me that
extra step." The
ceiling in the house on Sherburne Avenue might also
want to thank Mitchell’s husband,
"Otherwise," she says, "I’d be making tons of them and
putting them all over my house."
*The article has been updated to reflect
pertinent factual changes such as current web site
address.
Discover
Mitchell’s work at www.glassmobiles.com
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