Jul 13, 2008 - 04:06:13 CDT
“The work I do is very symbolic ... nests signify nurturing, and leaves and trees (are) associated with seasonal transitions. House thresholds are second chances and the hands are the support we need in times of growth and healing.” — Artist Jodi Reeb-Myers
At age 5, Jodi Reeb-Myers would draw posters on blue-lined tablet paper and sell them throughout her Bismarck neighborhood. That was her first awareness that making art could be a way to make a living.
Reeb-Myers now lives in Minneapolis and she does indeed make a living as an artist, and has done so for the past 12 years. This month, she came back to North Dakota for her 20th Bismarck High School reunion and to spend some time with her mother’s family in Killdeer.
“I try to come back at least once a year,” she said. “It’s grounding for me to visit, to get back to my roots.”
Roots — as well as seeds and leaves and trees and landscapes — ground Reeb-Myers in her art as well as her life.
“I find my work is really nature-based,” she said, “a lot of seed-type shapes. The seed contains everything it needs to make a plant. Then it progressed to leaf shapes, which are a micro/macro shape of a tree.” Reeb-Myers is now experimenting with landscapes of trees, she said.
“If I have one good idea, I explore that as many ways as I can. I also like the negative space, with lighting and shadows. And when you walk by it and walk around, it becomes about your body (as well).”
Fall, with its crisp mornings and warm afternoons, she said, is probably her favorite time of year, drawing her to nature-based, rustic colors.
Reeb-Myers has worked in a number of artistic mediums, but her degree is in printmaking and she likes texture, sculptural and three-dimensional elements. Her work leans toward the abstract and contemporary, she said.
“Painting is so direct,” she said. “Every brush stroke is a mark on the canvas. But in printmaking, some happy accidents happen.”
Printmaking starts with a woodcut, and even the wood grain has a “voice, plus you do it in reverse,” she said.
With woodcuts, you get that “carving” quality: “That’s the step that’s sculptural,” she said. She incorporates into her pieces actual texture and visual texture, such as pattern: “I paint in a lot of layers, and I see something new every time.”
To become a working artist, Reeb-Myers took a few tangents before finding the main road.
Her first experience with art was at Simle Middle School, followed up by learning sculpture, printmaking, even stretching a canvas, at BHS.
Her parents, who have both since died, were very down to earth, very practical, she said. So her tentative steps toward an art career were cushioned with practical alternatives, such as teaching and working in finance.
Still, when she moved to Minneapolis to attend Normandale Community College intending to study accounting, she ended up taking all art classes. Eventually, after being accepted to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, she ended up majoring in printmaking.
A couple of her instructors were very supportive, she said, “very helpful about what it meant to be a woman artist when I was struggling to find my own voice.”
After graduating from design school and becoming pregnant with her son, she got a receptionist’s job at an art consulting firm in Minneapolis. There, she started consigning her work.
“It became an opportunity,” she said. She changed some of her receptionist hours into studio work with the firm, which sells art to interior, corporate and commercial designers.
“It exploded after that,” she said. For the next six years, she was an in-house designer, making artwork for their inventory every day from 8 to 5.
After a time, the regimen became too much: “It became time to go on my own,” she said.
She’s been on her own for about four years, independently selling her work. She consigns with galleries and takes commissions based on her existing pieces.
“I carved a niche out for myself,” she said.
Reeb-Myers has a particular interest in creating art for health care environments. Her mother died of breast cancer in 1993, which meant Reeb-Myers spent a lot of time in hospital rooms, where the art is often atrocious, she said.
Now, she said, “I work with hospitals and clinics. Working with visual healing is a personal agenda for me. I feel like in a hospital setting, it can be really healing.”
Reeb-Myers has also taught art for nine years, and for people like her who want to be working artists, she counsels: “You get what you focus on. If you want to do something, you should do it.”
Some good advice she received, she passes along: “Just keep working. Do a bit every day, even if it’s just reading a book or going to a museum. Stay connected to that community.”
(Reach reporter Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@bismarcktribune.com.)
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