That's me in the corner there. Hi!

I’m a twenty-something professional that just can’t sit still.

I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with my husband, Brent (pictured above – he’s my best friend and partner-in-crime, despite all that looming) and our five cats: Wilma, Grendel, Lando Catrissian, Seven-of-Nine and Yoda. I also have a giant robot in my front yard.

I’ll go ahead and satisfy two postulations that you may have made by now:

• Yes, I’m a geek. Who isn’t, these days?
• No, I have not, nor will I ever dress my cats like people. (I have no comment on the matter of dressing them up like monsters from Godzilla and making a Youtube video of their epic battles.)

I have a formal education in the arts, with a background in printmaking, painting, communication design and art history. I also sew, write, and run a couple of small businesses on the side. I keep telling myself that I’m going to take a day off sometime soon, but whenever I’m not working on something that’s already in progress, I come up with something new to work on.

My interests and fixations span the entirety of the geek spectrum. Life is short, so I try to cram as much knowledge into my skull as I can. My hobbies include applying rigorous stress-tests to various gadgets, coming up with a slew of random ideas to keep my husband’s workshop from collecting dust, and running Lovesick Robot Press.

I’m also currently arting with the Studio Sunday artist collective out of my second-floor studio. Keep an eye on us. We’re trouble makers.

Jackie, In Greater Detail (Perhaps a little TOO much information…)

My decision to be a career artist was made with a hefty amount of frivolity.

I was a senior in high school with no conceivable direction in life, and I was in love with a boy on the internet. Motivated by a thick fog of raging hormones and a belief that I could draw “really really good”, I applied to a private art school in the same state as this boy with hopes of getting closer to him. This plan was utterly flawless, and turned out working a little too well; I promptly smothered the boy with my undying teenaged affection, and he skittered away in pursuit of a little breathing room. Trudging along with a broken heart, I continued learning how to draw (and paint, and design, and research) “really really good”, because I was led to believe that a little heartbreak is good for you and builds, uh, character. Or something like that.

I learned the technical aspects of art and design very quickly, and I devoured every piece of knowledge that I could possibly shove into my head. In retrospect, I should have taken more design-oriented classes, because my fine art teachers fueled a very special distaste for all things conceptual. I failed to create the conceptual masterpieces that my fine art teachers asked me to create, and the result was a crippling bout of depression that led me to ask the same question that all artists ask themselves at one point or another: “Why the fuck am I doing this?”

It wasn’t until a few years later that I’d be able to answer this question, after I met my mutual addiction and settled down a bit.

In retrospective, despite all the heartache and depression and mandatory bullshit that life hands out to people standing in line for the “real world”, I always had an insatiable need to create. It never mattered to me if what I was creating was good or not, as long as my hands and my brain were working together to make something that didn’t exist before. Now, after so many years of creating for creation’s sake, I realize that what I do is fun, the work that I create is pretty sweet, and I won’t settle for anything less than creating awesome things for a living.