november the first be with you, my friends. i have done a lot these past few weeks, and naturally i have started to feel crushed by the five unfinished drafts of blog posts i've been writing on paper, screen and in my mind. i caught myself starting to feel really bad for not publishing anything since last month[1], so here i am 31 minutes before a zoom call sharing with you some of my bathroom art to push myself to write and publish.
in 2017 i spoke at a conference called ffconf. it's run by lovely people, and it had a lovely lineup and audience as well - it just so happens to be happening again a week from today, so if you're in the area i highly recommend. this was my first time in brighton and fortunately i was able to make time around the event to walk around the shops and shop for art supplies. i purchased a hard cover book of watercolor paper in accordion form, which i thought was novel but i just googled it and see that even blick sells them. whatever, i had never seen such a thing in my life. during that walk, i saw a bird steal an entire baguette out of a guy's backpack and his partner scold him with "i TOLD you not to put it in there." i am not going to victim blame, but i was also warned that the birds there were aggressive.
i painted 3 self portraits in pixel art with watercolor. i can't find the original files because i am so bad at organizing my digital art, but the watercolors are currently hanging up in our bathroom.
that bottom one of the two paintings is my favorite of the three. i gave it to andy as a gift years ago and i joke that i "finally let him move in with me" so that i can get my favorite painting back in my possession. i knew where he lived before, i could have just robbed him!
due to the nature of the accordion paper, each of these framed portraits are diptychs which is why you may find the spacing in the middle of each of the paintings weird - if so, you're right, and it's because they are technically two paintings framed as one.
fun, free, fact: the painting with the wooden frame is framed as such because i broke the original white frame when we were hanging it up. i won't apologize for exclaiming that custom frames are too fucking expensive. if you are looking for some affordable standard frames from a shop based in jersey (united states), though, let me know because i got a guy (legal).
i believe it was the two white-framed paintings that were up in the "women's future" art show at litm (rip) in 2018. the watercolors were i believe limited edition from case for making, "cobalt blue light" and "pinkcolor". during that show, andy would stand around and tell people "i heard that's what they look like" because a funny bit we have is that he's never seen my boobs.
okay, i'm going to publish this now, with only 4 minutes to spare before my call. every friday i connect with a dear friend who i used to work with - we never stopped our weekly 1:1s. i'll ask her if she's ever been to brighton or had a bird steal her bread.
xoxo jenn
[1] i really appreciate all the kind words and cups of coffee that came from that, thank you.
a month ago i left a job i held for several years, a job that took me through a winding road of launching a product, going through an acquisition, lots of high points and lows...but ultimately i got to end the journey on my own terms, on my own time. i couldn't have asked for anything more, especially given the state of the world. i'm so very proud of my work at glitch and fastly, and it's special how i got to be one of just a handful of people who can say they have grown and lead millions of developers in creating the web and community! it was a lot of fucking work, though, and i need a break.
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releasing an editable document on the web for anyone to edit in any way is terrifying but exciting. that's in part why i worked on glitch for so long - letting millions of developers run arbitrary code, more often than not for free, allows incredible viral moments to happen that shine brighter than any of the bad stuff (spam, phishing). this facilitation of web building always comes with its moments of noticing someone is doing something you didn't intend and you immediately thinking 'oh, that's it, we're fucked' but more often than not the next moment you're tearing up because the web can be so beautiful.
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the last several weeks have been a lot, between plotting and executing a major life change and co-hosting xoxo. i have so much to say about those things, also past events like devrelcon that i've gone to...there's been a lot. i just need to finish my last week at work and process the past month and then i'm confident i'll never shut up on here.
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in my last blog post i talked about the kissy lips mac osx icon and how reactions of my use of it shaped the direction i took a lot of my art going forward - essentially, if i choose to express myself in a way and people tell me it's not professional simply because of misogyny, i'm going to double down. it was in september of 2014 when ben sisto, artist and expert on the song who let the dogs out, reached out to me about an art residency program he was running at the ace hotel, 24 x 36 - where 36 artists spent a night at the ace hotel in nyc over the course of 24 days.
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since the dawn of time, mainstream operating systems would offer a set of default avatars to choose from when creating your user profile. these avatars often had no context related to the software they came with – last night i learned that andy's old xbox 360 avatar was a pair of lemons. naturally, i had to introduce him to the iconoclast, my own founding mother of default avatars: the macosx kissy lips.
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ten years ago a true taste-maker ahead of her time, named jenn schiffer started a newsletter and it got to just over 1700 people which was pretty wild because in 2014 there were only like 5000 people on the internet. hi, i'm jenn schiffer, and i have since deleted my mailchimp account so i could only find the first issue in a reply to the email someone sent.
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my fucking allergies!! just kidding, that's not what this blog is about, i just wanted to acknowledge it. here are some other things i want to acknowledge, separated by 'these need your attention and action' and 'no call to action needed here'
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my employer hooked us up with cpr/aed/first-aid training so you should let me perform cpr on you, it would be real, certfied, fresh and fun.
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yesterday andy and i went to wonderville to help celebrate their 5th birthday! in this middle school standardized test essay, i will talk more about what that means and also close with a call to action related to a new show i'm doing this month.
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