In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Laura Harper Lake and Sarah Wrightsman sit down with New Hampshire artist Jackie Hanson! Jackie is a painter, printmaker, and creative entrepreneur from the Lakes Region. Her work is vibrant and whimsical with an emphasis on nature and all things New Hampshire. In this episode, we talk about Jackie’s identity as a printmaker, the Chicken People Club, and plane crashes (yes, that was a surprise to us, too!). Jackie was raised in a family where art and creativity were always encouraged, and her upbringing — including bucolic New England landscapes and her grandparents’ chickens — are a major influence! Jackie has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from New England College’s Institute of Art and Design. Check out Jackie’s work on the web at www.JackieHansonArt.com and on Instagram at www.instagram.com/jackiehansonart and Facebook at www.facebook.com/jackiehansonart. Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Thank you to our friends at Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter, NH and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, NH for their support of the show!
In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Laura Harper Lake and Sarah Wrightsman sit down with New Hampshire artist Jackie Hanson! Jackie is a painter, printmaker, and creative entrepreneur from the Lakes Region. Her work is vibrant and whimsical with an emphasis on nature and all things New Hampshire.
In this episode, we talk about Jackie’s identity as a printmaker, the Chicken People Club, and plane crashes (yes, that was a surprise to us, too!). Jackie was raised in a family where art and creativity were always encouraged, and her upbringing — including bucolic New England landscapes and her grandparents’ chickens — are a major influence! Jackie has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from New England College’s Institute of Art and Design.
Check out Jackie’s work on the web at www.JackieHansonArt.com and on Instagram at www.instagram.com/jackiehansonart and Facebook at www.facebook.com/jackiehansonart.
Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord.
If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com.
Thank you to our friends at Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter, NH and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, NH for their support of the show!
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:00] LHL: I'm Laura Harper Lake.
[0:00:01] SW: And I'm Sarah Wrightsman.
[0:00:02] LHL & SW: And you're listening to Creative Guts.
[0:00:18] LHL: Hey, friends. Thanks for tuning in to Creative Guts.
[0:00:20] SW: We're very excited for this episode. We are talking with an artist based in the Lakes Region, Jackie Hanson. Jackie is a person who feels like a friend, but this is actually our first-time meeting in real life, and we're going to talk more about that.
[0:00:33] LHL: But she is a friend.
[0:00:35] SW: She is now.
[0:00:35] LHL: Yes. Let's jump right into this episode of Creative Guts with Jackie Hanson.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:44] SW: Jackie, we're so excited to have you on Creative Guts.
[0:00:47] JH: Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. I've been a listener for a few years now.
[0:00:50] LHL: I know. We love that about you, Jackie.
[0:00:52] SW: And you've been in a bunch of our zines too.
[0:00:55] SW: Yes. Jackie has been part of the Creative Guts universe for a while. And here's the thing, I'm sure I say this in the intro, but we have never met before, but I feel like we have, and you've been on our radar forever, but I don't really know why.
[0:01:09] LHL: Just social media.
[0:01:11] SW: What was the origin?
[0:01:13] JH: Maybe I just commented enough. Maybe I was just enough of a stalker.
[0:01:17] SW: Do you remember how you found us?
[0:01:19] JH: No.
[0:01:20] LHL: Wow.
[0:01:21] JH: I listened to a lot of podcasts when I was commuting to college and maybe the app store just recommended it and I was like, "Oh, sweet. And it's New Hampshire too." I love that.
[0:01:32] LHL: I love it. It makes me so happy to hear.
[0:01:34] JH: That's what I think, but I don't know.
[0:01:37] SW: At least that we know of, there's three people who have been listening to us since basically the beginning. And I'm like, "Our number one fans forever."
[0:01:44] JH: I know. I know. It's so awesome.
[0:01:47] SW: We know you, but our listeners might not. For our listeners who don't know anything about you, will you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you as a creative?
[0:01:56] JH: Yeah. My name is Jackie Hanson. I'm running a little business called Jackie Hanson Art. I graduated from the New England College Institute of Art and Design in 2022. I call myself a painter and printmaker, and I saw my work as both the originals and print reproductions, print wall art, greeting card, stickers, etc. Yeah, I'm doing my best to make a living as a creative, eventually. And I describe my work as nature in full color to broadly cover that it's vibrant and natural-ish.
[0:02:34] LHL: It's stunning. I mean, it feels like nature's leaping off the page with some of your work. In the most recent scene that we had, the Love Letter to a Place, you put in three pieces and I love your artist statement behind them. And I also love the one that is the more vertical.
[0:02:50] JH: Yeah.
[0:02:51] LHL: It doesn't look like a photograph, but it looks better than a photograph, if that makes sense. I want to eat it. It's so gorgeous. The colors and just everything about it. And it just feels like I could climb into it and run around.
[0:03:02] JH: Oh, thank you.
[0:03:03] LHL: Yeah, I love that piece.
[0:03:05] JH: I've actually found that some of my pieces, I look at my reference photos that I take and I'm like, "Oh, this is amazing. It's enchanting. I have to paint this." And then I paint it, and then I look back at the reference photo and I'm like, "Who turned down the saturation? Look at the painting. Where did it go?"
[0:03:21] SW: That makes perfect sense.
[0:03:21] JH: Yeah, I have my reference photo for that one, it's one of my rotating phone backgrounds still, and I'm like, "Oh, what a gray day."
[0:03:31] LHL: I love that. I mean, I just think it's really hard for a photo to truly capture what is there. And even the best photographers often have to go into Lightroom or some program to just make it feel like how it truly felt when they were there.
[0:03:46] JH: Definitely.
[0:03:47] LHL: And so I feel like your work often does that where the piece with the raspberries that you had, that just sings. And it makes me feel like summer, which is nice to see right now because it is bleak as heck out there.
[0:04:02] JH: Yeah, that's definitely something that I'm trying to do in my work like. My work is very realistic at least right now. So trying to change it in a way that it reflects like my feeling in the moment because I mostly do use my own reference photos. It's like I remember the feeling of, I don't know, being really compelled by a place. Kind of wanting to leap into it. Yeah, I try to make that yearning to explore more come out in my pieces. And I want the viewers to get that as well.
[0:04:33] SW: Yeah. Yeah, it definitely comes through. And we've already sort of started to hint at your themes. There's a lot of nature. I look at your art and I'm like, "It's very like New Hampshire. And there's chickens. And there's animals. And there's fruit." And it's just very like happy summer New Hampshire. Can you talk a little bit about what inspires you and how do you find inspiration, especially if you're stuck or you're just wandering around outside?
[0:05:03] JH: That kind of reminds me my tip that I always give people for breaking artists block is to go do some living because you draw your art from life. You run out of artwork, you gotta go gather something. That's kind of what I do. I am exploring around the New England area. Generally, pretty much New Hampshire and a little bit of Maine. And I'm taking pictures all the time. I'm trying to be really mindful of noticing things in the world around me. And then I go back through and there's like 100 photos and I might pick two that I really like. And I'll edit them in certain ways.
There was like a poll on that raspberry painting that was in the way in my reference photos. I had to mentally figure that out. And the background was pretty different. I'm working on making some more creative changes in my work. That can be difficult for me as a reference image, girly.
[0:05:53] LHL: Do you often work from just your own or do you use commercial free ones that are on Unsplash or are you really –
[0:05:59] JH: Sometimes I have to do that, but I don't love to. I am familiar. My high school teacher was really good and he taught us about fair use and changing things enough that it is your own. I have a pretty good handle on that. I prefer to use my own, so I don't have to think about it. But a lot of my chicken pieces were originally from my grandparents' chickens, and they no longer have chickens. What's a girl to do?
[0:06:24] LHL: Walk around to other people's houses who have chickens.
[0:06:26] JH: Yeah, just hop fences and break into coops, "This is mine now. I'm just borrowing it."
[0:06:36] LHL: I mean, it's kind of what like Unsplash and Pexels and all these websites do, but I wish there was a way for folks to just source photos of their own. Sarah takes a picture and she's like anyone who wants to use this in their art, not like to sell the exact piece. Or you put a call out and say, "Give me your chicken pictures, folks." I wish there was more of that sort of sharing.
[0:06:59] SW: I have some chicken photos on my Instagram and you are welcome to any one of them.
[0:07:04] JH: I will go scroll your Instagram for chickens. I do a new chicken every month and I have a high need for chickens.
[0:07:09] LHL: Oh, we're definitely going to circle back to the chicken people club.
[0:07:14] SW: Let's dig into a little bit of when and how did you know you wanted to be an artist?
[0:07:20] JH: Oh, always. Yeah. I'm one of those people that's like, "Yeah, I come from artists."
[0:07:25] SW: I don't know if I knew that, but I somehow knew that.
[0:07:29] JH: My parents aren't professionally artists. But my mom did study art in school. She was one class away from getting the degree that I got and it was because of a rotten old man professor that she didn't.
[0:07:42] LHL: Gosh.
[0:07:42] JH: Yeah. She's very creative. She was a painter before me and my sister were born. And she took up photography because she didn't want us to eat her paint when we were little. She was taking a ton of photos through my childhood. And so I kind of developed a natural eye through seeing what she did and handling her camera. And she was very encouraging.
I remember one time she took a class on creative ink textures, like toothbrushes and sponges, whatever trash, a lot of trash, that you could get a hold of and making marks with ink and then cropping the exploration to get interesting compositions. She did a class on that and then she came home and did it with me when I was like, I don't know, eight? Make a huge inky mess in the kitchen. And I was like, "This is awesome." I really remember that exercise and just stuff like that all the time.
My mom's an artist. My sister, she studied math, but she's a very good artist too. My dad would crochet when I was a kid. Yeah, my grandmother paints. Yeah, a long line of creative people, even if they're not pursuing it for their income. There was no holding back from pursuing it.
[0:08:55] SW: Wow.
[0:08:57] LHL: I love that.
[0:08:57] JH: And in high school, when it came time to think about colleges and stuff, somehow up until high school I was like, "Oh, maybe I'll be an author, a fashion designer or something. Those are kind of art." But then in high school, it was like, "What about art?" And all the aptitude tests and stuff they make you take, they were like, "Be a financial person." I was like, "What? Eww." Yeah, so then I had really good middle and high school art teachers and it was kind of like no question of which art school are you gonna go to. Not even like –
[0:09:31] LHL: It's just a given.
[0:09:32] JH: Yeah. It was like, "So have you got your portfolio together?" Super-duper lucky. I know a lot of people come into it later in life, but I had everybody along the way was like, "Yeah, this is – yeah. Do it."
[0:09:44] SW: Yeah, that is so fortunate. I imagine there are artists out there listening who are like, "Hmm, what's that like? Your parents were supportive of you doing arts?"
[0:09:52] JH: Yeah, I know. A lot to unpack there. But my family is super cool.
[0:09:56] LHL: I love that.
[0:09:59] SW: Do you all collaborate?
[0:10:01] JH: Not right now. My mom has wanted to for a while. Right now, she's really into quilting and fabric work. And she wants to do – I'm sure you've seen people that use quilting techniques to create paintings for the wall. I feel like she's been talking about doing a piece with birches for a while. And, I don't know, maybe if I – I know she wants to collaborate, I know she wants to do that piece. Maybe if I'm like, "Hey, let's do it together," maybe she'll find out listening to this.
[0:10:28] SW: Hey!
[0:10:30] LHL: I love that.
[0:10:31] JH: Yeah, we usually work pretty independently, but we're all in the same house, so we're all giving each other feedback and things. I'm like, "Look at this thing I did."
[0:10:41] LHL: That's so great. I love that.
[0:10:43] JH: I'm 26 years old and I'm still like – I'll finish a painting and then I'll walk it around in the house like, "Look."
[0:10:50] LHL: Yeah, I'm almost 40, and I do that to my husband. Like, "Look at this painting I just did. What do you think? Give me all the feedback now." And if you raise an eyebrow, I'm going to – no.
[0:11:02] SW: I was just reflecting a couple of days ago on how often I go immediately to my mom when something happens. I am a homeowner in my mid-30s, and I'm like, "Mom, my car battery died."
[0:11:15] JH: Oh my gosh.
[0:11:17] SW: Please help. Yeah. Yeah. We all just, I don't know, need our moms.
[0:11:23] JH: Yeah.
[0:11:25] SW: You're primarily a painter, but I want to talk about you as a printmaker. And part of the reason why I want to talk about this is because on your website, your prints are under a header that reads, "But I'm not a printmaker," which I think is hilarious and super relatable. Talk to us a little bit about like labels, and your artistic identity, and getting comfortable with different identities like printmaker, because you're a printmaker just so you know.
[0:11:55] JH: Okay. Yeah, I have all these prints, but I'm not a printmaker.
[0:11:59] LHL: Oh my gosh, this pickle is awesome.
[0:12:03] SW: For reference, folks, Jackie has literally taught classes on printmaking at Mosaic.
[0:12:11] JH: Well, they were separate majors in school. So I was like, "These are different disciplines for different people," even though I had a minor in ceramics, which you don't even see on my website. I don't know. I was like, "Oh, I'm not like the print makers." I would see like memes about what the different majors were like and they were like, "Print makers all dressed like this." And I was like, "Yeah, they're right. I'm not that though." Yeah, I don't know. And I wasn't in love with all the processes and it seems like all the other print makers were. I was like, "That's not me. I should paint." I was going through this feeling guilty for doing anything that didn't feel monetarily productive, if that makes sense.
[0:12:48] SW: That's a millennial thing and maybe a Gen Z thing too where we were sort of punished or taught that you must be productive all the time. And if you're being not productive, then that's lazy or whatever.
[0:12:59] JH: Oh, yeah.
[0:12:59] SW: We can't just do things for pleasure.
[0:13:01] JH: Yeah, I hit burnout like a brick wall last year.
[0:13:05] LHL: Yeah, feel that.
[0:13:06] JH: Yeah. At first, I couldn't really wrap my brain around it because painting has all these nuances to it. And printmaking can be quite literally black and white. Turning things into a more graphic style just didn't really make sense to me. And then I saw somebody online doing the eraser printmaking, which is where you take a pink eraser, like you would pull out of your pencil case at school, and you cut it up like it's a linoleum block. And then I've been using stamping ink. I used to work at a card-making stamping store, and it's super easy to crank one out and then just stamp in. That's like, "I made that," without all the hours of labor of any size larger of linoleum. Even a four-by-six would take hours where an eraser is half an hour, pretty solidly.
[0:13:51] LHL: Yep. And it's such a consistent cohesive collection on your website of just dimensions. Like this long, narrow – it's so great. Actually, I'm so glad you brought this up because I didn't see your printmaking. I was looking at all your other pieces and I was like, "I'm over here shopping." I'm like, "Oh, I really like this one." I'm like, "Oh, shoot, I got an interview to do." But your love you bag, that's just love you, love you, love you. I think when you have those limitations and restrictions on your dimensions, and your size, and everything, it forces you to be creative even in a whole another way.
[0:14:25] JH: Definitely.
[0:14:26] LHL: I love that.
[0:14:26] JH: And simplifying things down enough that it will translate in that tiny size.
[0:14:30] SW: Yes.
[0:14:31] JH: After maybe five or six of them, my brain just kind of clicked and I understood that graphic style of thinking, and so now I can do it, which is awesome.
[0:14:41] SW: Yes.
[0:14:42] JH: I think my favorite one is still – it's one of the older ones at this point, but it's the ketchup packet.
[0:14:47] LHL: I love the ketchup packet.
[0:14:47] JH: It's the right size and shape. I love it.
[0:14:51] SW: I bought the ketchup packet at Mosaic. I love the ketchup packet.
[0:14:54] JH: Oh, that's so great.
[0:14:57] JH: Yeah, it looks very postmodern too because of the color, the color blocking with it, like the red. And it just, it looks so fashionable.
[0:15:06] SW: Yes, it does.
[0:15:07] LHL: For a ketchup packet, it so cool.
[0:15:10] SW: No, it's great. I'm blown away because you took something kind of intimidating, like art making, and made it simple and inexpensive. We're talking about a pink eraser, you're teaching people how to do it. It's so great and accessible. I love it.
[0:15:25] JH: Yeah, I love it too. More people should embrace their creativity. I was very lucky and I didn't have that hurdle to jump, but a lot of people are like, "Oh, I could never do art. I can't draw a stick figure."
[0:15:40] LHL: I hear that all the time.
[0:15:41] JH: It's like, "Oh." I'm like, "You could if you like sat down and did it." The only thing that's stopping you is that you're scared. And what's the worst that's gonna happen? You throw away the piece of paper? Like, "Oh, no. That happens a million times every day."
[0:15:54] SW: Yup. Oh, no. Everyone knows that artists are naturally born with all of your talent and then no hard work goes into it whatsoever.
[0:16:01] JH: Yeah. Totally true. Second I was born, I was like, "Can we get this framed? I made this while I was waiting to come out."
[0:16:12] SW: I made this painting literally in the womb.
[0:16:14] JH: Yeah. Hold on, my art's coming next.
[0:16:20] SW: I'm sorry. What's the point of getting degrees in art if you were already born with all of this natural talent?
[0:16:24] LHL: Right. Yeah.
[0:16:26] JH: I remember trying to convince friends in high school to take art classes with me because I was in all of them, and they were like, "Oh, I can't do art. I probably shouldn't." And I'm like, "It's a class. What do you do in class?" Yeah, I really like being able to – I don't do a whole lot of teaching, but I like those eraser classes because people can go from never really heard of printmaking before to I just made my first print within an hour and a half. And then it's super accessible. I buy my erasers at the dollar store in packs of six. You get a pad of ink, you get the Lionel tool, which is, I don't know. Last time I checked, it was 20 bucks. It's probably like 30 now.
[0:17:10] SW: Right. Yeah.
[0:17:12] JH: That's the biggest investment. And then just like any paper, any erasers. I've even gotten like novelty ones on clearance that are different shapes and worked with those a little bit.
[0:17:22] SW: Oh, I love that.
[0:17:23] JH: Yeah, they all kind of work.
[0:17:26] SW: And you're keeping the eraser business afloat.
[0:17:29] JH: Yeah, singlehandedly.
[0:17:30] LHL: If they knew what artists were – they'd bump up those prices. Like, "Oh, this is an art supply in a different way now."
[0:17:38] JH: There's actually a whole Instagram page that I follow that I got the idea from. And it's a woman out in Arizona. I think she does Cactus Clouds Art, but she runs a page, Pink Eraser Art, that's got all kinds of people doing it. And so everybody has a different style, too. And so it's really versatile for something so unassuming?
[0:17:57] SW: Yeah. Oh, it's so inspiring. Yeah.
[0:18:00] LHL: Okay. Can we talk about the chickens?
[0:18:04] SW: Yeah, my original question when we were working on your interview sheet was, "Do you like chickens?" And then I was like, "Hmm, we can do better than that."
[0:18:12] JH: I do like chickens.
[0:18:14] SW: Really?
[0:18:15] JH: Yes.
[0:18:17] SW: Please tell us about the Chicken People Club.
[0:18:20] JH: The chicken series started because I think I was in water-based media class during COVID and I was taking it under the table, don't tell the college. But I was just zooming in and not getting credit for it. And they did a small works trade. They were like, "Okay, do a dozen or so pieces and then I'll meet you somewhere with a mask and pick them up and trade them with the class that's here in person." Because I took a semester off due to COVID.
And so I was like, "I kind of feel like painting a chicken, I guess." And so I painted one and I was like, "This is awesome." This came out so good. And then I kept painting them and I painted more than I needed so that I could keep the good ones. Gave away all the so-so chickens. And then I kind of kept painting them. I was like, "Maybe I can make cards from these." They're small enough that it would kind of work.
I started making cards with those and it kind of caught on people on Facebook marketplace were like, "I want cards. Can I have the buff one?" And I was like, "What's buff?" And it turns out it's Buff Orpington, breed of Chicken. And I'm like, "See, I'm not the chicken expert." But, yeah. I kept painting them.
And then eventually, I'm getting closer to the end of art school and I was like, "I got to come up with money." I knew the Patreon was a thing. I had never thought of how I could use it before. I was like, "I probably don't have the following for this." But I started it. I was like, "I'm going to do a Patreon page, Chicken People Club." And every month I'll paint a new chicken and send it as a card in the mail. Initially, it was exclusive to those people, but then I was like, "Some of these chickens are pretty good," and I haven't had any like new outside of the club chickens. I made it exclusive through the end of that month.
And so it started with one person and it was just the one for like six months. And then, slowly, more people started to join and like I got my new job at NEC and my boss joined and has them sent to her mother. And friends, parents were joining. And like half of the subscriptions are people that have gifted it to someone else. Now people that I haven't heard of are getting chickens and like it's still not a ton, but it's paying for both my website and my cell phone. So that's pretty cool.
[0:20:40] LHL: That is amazing. I started a Patreon and then didn't launch it publicly because I was like, "Oh, who's going to do it? I don't have the following for it." And so you're really inspiring me right now. That sounds amazing.
[0:20:53] JH: You should go for it. I mean, it was just one person, but they were like, "Yeah, I love to see people go for it." So I want to support them when that happens. And they're still on my page now. They actually just increased their subscription. They're so sweet.
[0:21:08] LHL: That's awesome.
[0:21:10] JH: Yeah, all it takes is one person and then you're accountable and you can grow it from there. I found that really cool. And then I get the subscription income, but then I also have an original painting afterwards. And half the time, that sells. That's pretty cool. There's a lot of chicken people out there. It is such a specific yet widespread interest. I'm sure both of you are like, "I know who would be the chicken person in my life."
[0:21:37] SW: I think, unfortunately, it might be me. I might be the chicken person.
[0:21:42] JH: I don't know if you ever read the hashtags on my post, but I'm like, "#crazychickenlady, #henstagram." There are chicken tags, there are chicken accounts, there are people that just post their eggs, lay them out in rainbow order. There's a chicken world out there.
[0:22:01] SW: Eggs are a hot commodity now.
[0:22:03] LHL: Yeah, seriously. And while I wouldn't necessarily call myself a chicken person, I grew up with my family raising chickens and ducks. I've been around chickens my whole life. I appreciate them, but I'm not necessarily searching the world for chicken decor art. But your chicken stuff is so frickin' cool. The disco chicken. Like, "Oh my gosh." Okay. If you're a listener, you're like, "Gosh, a disco chicken." It is what it sounds, but even better than you can imagine. It is just gorgeous and I want to pet it and dance with it at the same time.
But no, you have such a broad array of styles and the way in which you're framing these chickens with the rainbows or with the outer space on a broomstick or in a yard, typical chicken hanging out. I really appreciate that because I think that goes a bit beyond just like – you're not just a chicken person. You're a chicken person with style. That's what it feels like.
[0:23:05] JH: Yeah. I think I started with mostly kind of abstract and greenish in the background, like, "It's in a yard." And then you paint a few dozen of those chickens and you start to –
[0:23:18] LHL: All right, ladies. There's something entertaining here.
[0:23:21] JH: Yeah. You start to pursue other ideas. And it's turned into – I take whatever I'm interested in painting and I find a way to chickenize it. There's the disco ball painting trend and I was like, "I want to paint a disco ball, but I got to paint this chicken. Wait." Stuff like that. I felt like painting a gold frame. So I painted an angry chicken in a gold frame. Optical illusion type thing.
[0:23:49] LHL: Cablo Pecasso? The chicken painting a person on their canvas.
[0:23:56] JH: It's me.
[0:23:56] SW: It's you.
[0:24:01] LHL: I love it when it can look so cool and give you such good feeling, but also have humor in it. It's so great.
[0:24:05] JH: Yeah. If I can think of a groaner for a title, that's the title.
[0:24:13] LHL: Oh, man. Yeah, I think Disco Chicken takes – Disco Girl is the name of the piece. I think that one might take the cake for me. I mean, I'd never a million years would have thought that. And I love it so much. She's beautiful.
[0:24:26] JH: Thank you.
[0:24:27] SW: Yeah, really beautiful.
[0:24:28] SW: I love that, I love that.
[0:24:29] JH: Yeah. It takes a few dozen chickens to get to Disco Chicken, but you get there.
[0:24:33] SW: Yeah. If you really start to like go off the rails, there'll be like stripper chickens and like things will just get kind of weird. I grew up with one chicken that we acquired kind of on accident. We had a neighbor who had chickens and their chickens would just kind of like wander. Sometimes when I was driving to school in high school, I'd stop my car and wait for the chickens to get the heck out of the road. One day, a chicken just kind of like wandered into our yard and we were like, "Cool, this is ours now." And we built a chicken coop and an enclosure and stuff for it and the chicken lived in our yard alone for a while.
[0:25:12] JH: It's like a rescue chicken.
[0:25:13] LHL: Sarah, it sounds like fowl play. I'm sorry.
[0:25:19] SW: And then a couple of years later – we named her Wanda, by the way, because she wanded into our yard. And then, I don't know, a couple of years later, she disappeared and we were like, "Well, that's the end of our chicken-owning days."
[0:25:31] JH: Chickens can be tragic. I don't have chickens, which shocks many people.
[0:25:35] SW: It is a little shocking.
[0:25:36] JH: Yeah. They're like, "What are your chicken's names?" And I'm like, "Zero." Yeah, they were inspired by my grandparents' chickens that used to exist a mile away from me. They're just really nostalgic and fun about all the tragedy of like foxes, and hawks, and ferrets, and all the many things that will destroy a chicken.
[0:25:56] LHL: Yeah.
[0:25:57] SW: Yeah. My love of chickens was then sort of reignited. I kind of was like, "Okay, cool. I had this cool pet chicken for a little bit as a kid." And then I went to Key West in my early 20s and chickens just roam free in Key West like squirrels.
[0:26:15] JH: I've heard that about Hawaii.
[0:26:16] SW: Oh, that's so weird. And I thought it was so odd. I'm a New Englander. I'm used to seeing squirrels everywhere. And I'm walking around Key West and it was so weird. There were just chickens everywhere all-over Key West. And I loved it so much that that was sort of – that was really the origin of my chickenness.
[0:26:31] JH: Can you just find eggs out then?
[0:26:33] SW: That is a great question.
[0:26:35] JH: Do eggs cost less there?
[0:26:37] SW: I have no idea.
[0:26:37] JH: I bet squirrel meat costs less here.
[0:26:40] LHL: Squirrel meat.
[0:26:43] JH: Eww. Gross.
[0:26:49] LHL: We're going to dive away from chickens for a moment here.
[0:26:53] JH: Bye, chickens.
[0:26:54] LHL: Yeah. But let's talk about mediums because we talked about printmaking. But you're a painter, but you work in a lot of different mediums. Do you feel like one, watercolors, acrylics, oils, gouache, where –
[0:27:07] SW: Pastels.
[0:27:09] LHL: Pastels.
[0:27:10] JH: No oils.
[0:27:11] LHL: No oils. Okay. No oils. But are all the other ones I mentioned ones that you play with?
[0:27:15] JH: Yeah, gouache, watercolor, acrylic, pastels. My senior thesis was in pastels. I was like, "Yeah, this is my main medium." And then I was like, "I kind of feel like painting with acrylic. Is that crazy?" Because in art school, it was kind of viewed as the crazy people medium. How do they do it?
And so I've been on an acrylic kick for a couple of years. But yeah, every once in a while, I'll just feel kind of stale. And I'm like, "If I switch mediums, then that kind of forces some new creative growth." That seems to be what works for me. What I like to tell people when I'm doing pop up fairs is that I get an idea and I figure out what medium would work best for it.
I have one collector who wants me to do a commission of some horses, and the sky is really interesting, and I'm like, "That is watercolor." There's no way around it. But then a lot of things, I'm like, "That texture of that rock, that'd be awesome in pastel." It's kind of true, but it's also kind of like I'm on a kick of acrylic right now. I'm going to paint an acrylic.
[0:28:14] LHL: Okay. Yeah. Sarah once asked me that question, if you were an interdisciplinary artist and you get an idea for a concept or subject matter that you want to depict, how do you decide what – do you get the idea first and then the medium? Or the medium and then you think of ideas? A lot of artists approach it many different ways. I always love hearing that. You're really hankering to do this type of medium and then you do this or whatever. I don't know.
[0:28:39] JH: Yeah. And I think mixed media is really interesting. I don't incorporate it often, but I would love to get to a point where I just like know what medium is needed for whatever texture and I just go for it regardless of what's on the rest of the piece. Don't do a whole lot of that right now, but goals. I don't know, it makes me struggle because you're told as an artist to find your style. And I think a lot of artists use their medium as part of their style, but I just can't stay put.
[0:29:05] LHL: I feel you.
[0:29:07] JH: I think people have told me that they think I have a style. I can't really see it yet. I think I'm getting there. But I would like it to translate across mediums. And I got a comment about the way I make my marks in college. And I've tried to lean into that since then. But yeah, other than that, I'm like, "How can I make it flow through that you would know it's a Jackie piece, whether it's in like a thick, heavy acrylic or watercolor?"
[0:29:33] SW: Right.
[0:29:33] LHL: I think for paints, when I look at your work. I think it's the consistency of colors and the saturation that we were talking about. That makes me feel like I recognize your work. I feel like with the print-making pieces, that's obviously different. That's kind of a different ballpark with the eraser prints. But I think your vibrancy, like that saturation you were talking about, that's definitely a feature piece.
[0:29:56] SW: Yeah. Well, and I wonder too, part of being young, artist or not, is sort of figuring out your identity, right? Figuring out who you are. But I actually wonder, the older I get, if that ever really stops or if you're just always evolving.
[0:30:10] JH: Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of.
[0:30:14] LHL: I still don't know what my style is.
[0:30:15] JH: I went on the tours in high school and I'm like, "Oh, look at these people in their senior studios ready to launch their careers. They figured out their style." And then I got to my senior year and I was like, "Ah, what do I do?" All my classmates were like, "What do I feel like doing? Do I want to do some book binding? Or am I into like large-scale abstracts?" And I'm like, "That's kind of what it's like to be an artist." I feel like I know more people than not that want to try everything. If it exists, you want to try making it.
[0:30:46] SW: Yep.
[0:30:47] LHL: Yeah. I think good for you if you find that little niche area that you just want to work in this discipline, or this subject matter, or whatever it may be. And that's great, but I think it is really fun to explore. And even in different stages in your life, maybe I worked with acrylics in college and I haven't touched it in a while. But then even two decades later, you can learn something new when you incorporate it in mixed media or do something different. I feel like it's just really fun to keep playing and exploring. It's just sort of what the point of it is to me.
[0:31:17] JH: Yeah. And when I switch media and then I come back to a previous one, I find that I've learned something new about the other medium. I might go back to watercolor in a year or something, but I treat it differently because of all this time I've spent with acrylic, if that makes sense. I think it builds on your previous skills, even if they don't exactly overlap.
[0:31:38] LHL: Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
[0:31:40] SW: Yep.
[0:31:41] LHL: Yeah. I'm so excited to talk to you right now. I mentioned to you, but listeners, I'm moving back into Art Up Front Street by the time this airs. I will be back here. Do you have like a woo button? Yep, not quite woo.
[0:32:13] JH: Are you impressed? Why aren't you smiling bigger?
[0:32:17] LHL: I heard like the faintest –
[0:32:18] SW: Oh, she's heard all these buttons.
[0:32:19] JH: That's true. That's true.
[0:32:21] LHL: It was mostly in the granite goodness interview. You guys were like, "Let's try them." Dang it, that's not the right one. But yes, I haven't been able to work on physical media in a long time because of a lack of a studio, just mostly digital art. And so now I'm going to be diving back in. And every night when I go to sleep, I think about how I'm arranging my studio, one. And two, what are the different series I'm going to paint? What different subject matters? What different media? And so talking to you is like lighting the fire even more because I'm just like, "Yes, I'm going to do this soon again." I really miss it. And I love connecting with our artists because it really is like such a, I don't know, fuel to the fire. It really is.
[0:33:07] JH: Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, I think of myself as an introvert, but like not with artists. I was a little nervous to come interview, but then I was like, "We're just going to talk about art." I can't stop yapping about art and they want to listen.
[0:33:22] LHL: Yeah, we do. I love it. And it's so great. I love hearing about the decision-making and the Zen that people feel from their art, like why they create and everything. I think that's why what we do never gets old or dull because everyone does something different. That's kind of the beauty of it.
[0:33:39] JH: Yeah, definitely.
[0:33:40] SW: Yeah. Although after a hundred-something full-length interviews, it feels like everyone is exactly the same despite their differences.
[0:33:48] LHL: Certainly, in certain aspects of imposter syndrome or just their passion for it, there's these uniting threads.
[0:33:55] SW: Yeah. We have so many sort of similar conversations or we have a conversation with someone and I'm like, "That kind of reminds me of a conversation we had with someone else."
[0:34:02] LHL: Yeah.
[0:34:03] SW: Yeah, that's very cool.
[0:34:05] LHL: I'm curious what your practice looks like. Do you have rituals? Do you listen to music while you're working or anything like that?
[0:34:12] JH: Okay. I have a full-time day job that's an hour away from home. So it's mostly evenings. Do a lot of art markets on the weekends. Trying to do less this year because a day off every few weeks will be pretty nice.
[0:34:24] LHL: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:34:25] JH: You know? A lot of painting at night. Sometimes the sound of my parents' TV is enough to keep my brain from getting onto TikTok. Sometimes it's TikTok to me, like one hand scrolling, one hand painting. A lot of times – this is the worst one. I mean, there's podcasts, too. A lot of times it's documentaries about plane crashes.
[0:34:52] LHL: Hey, I like apocalypses. I can't judge. [inaudible 0:34:54]
[0:34:54] JH: There’s a lot of true crime girlies right now. The one that I'm doing right now is Mayday: Air Disasters, which is on Tube. Or like this podcast that has gone off the air, Black Box Down. Do you know them?
[0:35:10] SW: Oh, I've heard of that.
[0:35:11] LHL: Oh, no. Maybe not. It's a documentary?
[0:35:14] JH: That one's a podcast. Mayday is a documentary. Like a docu-series.
[0:35:16] LHL: There's one called Passenger List that sounds very similar, but it's like a fictional podcast about a plane that went missing.
[0:35:25] JH: Okay.
[0:35:26] LHL: I think it's called Passenger List.
[0:35:28] JH: Some fiction might be nice.
[0:35:30] LHL: Yeah.
[0:35:30] JH: Because I'm watching like an hour-and-a-half feature on the Tenerife disaster. The thing that got me into it was Ghost Flights, which was a few years ago. And it's like when the plane depressurizes and everybody on board goes unconscious, but it's on autopilot. It just runs until it runs out of fuel and there's nothing anybody can do to stop it, which is crazy to me. And so I leapt into this –
[0:35:57] LHL: Her soul has left her body, folks.
[0:35:58] JH: It's only happened when I first read about it six times in history. I think we're up to seven now, seven flights ever that that's happened. But it's still like, "What?" And then you start watching these things.
[0:36:15] LHL: Seriously. Become a ghost.
[0:36:17] JH: About to never get out of plane it again, right? Yeah, somehow these things are what I listen to and I'm like, "Raspberries."
[0:36:29] LHL: The contrast.
[0:36:31] JH: I low-key have a safe landings miniseries that I've been working on for like a year and just haven't touched in a while where I took five of the craziest plane crashes and I like read all the details. What direction they were heading? Time of day? How high up they were? The type of plane? And I created like a sky painting with that plane in it to imagine that the plane landed safely but they didn't.
[0:37:00] SW: Oh, my God. I love that actually.
[0:37:01] JH: Yeah. I have like three of them out of five finished now but maybe I'll release them at some point.
[0:37:07] LHL: That's fascinating.
[0:37:07] SW: There was just a plane crash in Toronto where the plane landed upside down.
[0:37:10] JH: There have been so many plane crashes. That one was last night at the time of recording and I haven't heard anything. I've just seen the footage and I was like, "How does that –"
[0:37:20] LHL: Thankfully, everyone survived, which is amazing.
[0:37:24] JH: That's crazier than the fact that it happened.
[0:37:25] SW: Right? Miraculous.
[0:37:26] SW: Yes.
[0:37:27] LHL: Yeah. I know.
[0:37:29] JH: I don't know if I've heard about anywhere it landed on its back. Usually it's like, I don't know, some weird angle or like side of a mountain, but upside down, laying down like me in bed. What?
[0:37:43] SW: - I did not have – talking about plane crashes on our interview –
[0:37:51] JH: That's one of the things I can get yappin' about. Yeah, that's my weird listen to thing. And it's not music, it's disaster.
[0:38:04] LHL: I mean, I kind of understand it. I do. I really love listening or watching, reading, and listening to apocalypse fiction. And there is something really comforting in a disaster that is happening. What I'm dealing with right now is not on the level of whatever this is. I don't know.
[0:38:21] JH: Yeah. The one thing about plane crashes is that every single one results – well, for the most part, other than pilot error. Well, even then, it results in recommendations from like the FAA for the manufacturers need to fix this, or the pilots need better training in that, or like we need to regulate how much sleep they're getting. With every crash that happens, they say the next one becomes less likely.
[0:38:44] SW: Wow.
[0:38:46] JH: That's like the one thing. The guys that do the Black Box Down podcast, by the time they finished, one of them had gotten his pilot's license from not even being interested when they started. Yeah. And I haven't listened to quite enough to want to do that, but –
[0:38:59] LHL: I was just going to say, you should do a podcast on this. You're very knowledgeable. It's very interesting.
[0:39:07] JH: Just me going off about like – I don't know what I'm doing to say. Just me going off about the ghost flights or something. Like, "And they do this. Isn't that crazy?"
[0:39:22] SW: We know that you are already very busy and you do not need to start –
[0:39:27] LHL: Very true. Very true. Yes.
[0:39:29] JH: Maybe someday. I'll put that on my list of, like, "In the next life, pursue this."
[0:39:35] SW: Yes.
[0:39:36] LHL: Yeah. I have a list of retirement plans.
[0:39:38] JH: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I hope I get like six retirements, because I've got –
[0:39:47] SW: Speaking of being busy, you mentioned burnout earlier. How do you cope with that? How are you finding balance? Because you've got your own artistic work, commission, social media, the sort of business side, and you have a full-time job, and you're pretty engaged in the creative community. How do you do it?
[0:40:04] JH: It's something that is still a work in progress for me. Right now, I'm kind of in a rest phase. It's February when we're recording this. Not a whole lot of art markets going on. I'm like, "I'm just going to lay low for a little bit. I'm going to paint because that recharges me." I'm not going to paint all the time because then it won't recharge me. And I decided to make sure that I don't do any more than two markets a month during this coming year. And not to even bother if it's not worth my time anyway. No offense to any of the markets that I'm not coming back to. And I might come back to you in the future. But I had to make some really hard decisions so that I can have a day off every few weeks.
[0:40:42] SW: Yeah. You need that balance.
[0:40:44] LHL: That's important.
[0:40:44] JH: Yeah. Summer isn't the inspiration for a lot of my work. And so you might have noticed I've done less landscapes. I haven't had time to go out and do stuff. I got to do that. I like to go on walks at my day job and sometimes I get inspiration from that. But yeah, I'm learning to be careful with what I commit to and prioritize making work that feels good. I haven't taken a new commission in a while, I'm still catching up. Sorry, Sue. And I'm still figuring it out. If anybody has any tips, I would love them. But yeah, that's the big thing for me right now is I'm just so tired.
[0:41:27] LHL: It's super hard. Yeah, I know.
[0:41:29] JH: I hit the ground running after art school and I was like, "I can't make it unless I hustle 100%." And I feel like, as a society, we're learning that that wasn't the answer. Yeah, I'm right there in it.
[0:41:41] SW: Yup.
[0:41:42] LHL: I feel it 100%. Still trying to figure that out.
[0:41:47] JH: Yeah. I just hope I can wake back up again around spring, you know?
[0:41:52] LHL: Yeah. I feel like all our batteries are going to be really recharged with getting back out into nature or just walking down the street in a nice little town. I miss just seeing people at the bookstore. I don't know.
[0:42:05] JH: Yeah.
[0:42:05] SW: Yeah. It's been a big snowy winter.
[0:42:12] JH: Really crazy, which has been kind of nice because my job is out of college and so they've called some remote days, which library from home is monitor email, if you catch my drift. If you're from my day job, you didn't hear that. But, no. It's true. I think that's true of any remote job, is that there's a little bit more downtime. That has helped my rest too. I'm grateful to have a job that is like that.
[0:42:41] LHL: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:42:42] JH: Snow can be good for some of us.
[0:42:43] LHL: Yes.
[0:42:43] SW: Yeah, yeah.
[0:42:47] LHL: I think it's time to shift into rapid fire.
[0:42:49] SW: Okay.
[0:42:49] JH: We're here.
[0:42:51] LHL: Rapid-fire time.
[0:42:53] JH: I've studied.
[0:42:53] LHL: Jackie thinks she's ready.
[0:42:56] SW: Pop quiz.
[0:42:58] JH: I've just been overthinking this since sophomore year of college. It's okay. This is my favorite color for the rest of my life.
[0:43:06] LHL: It can't change.
[0:43:07] SW: You are committed to these answers forever.
[0:43:09] JH: Yes, definitely.
[0:43:12] SW: We, of course, threw in some fun, surprise questions.
[0:43:17] JH: All right. Let me just call my therapist.
[0:43:22] SW: All right, first question. What other artists has influenced you the most?
[0:43:27] JH: According to my notes – I picked all living people. Well, no. No, I didn't. Whoops. Contemporary, I guess? Jim Mullen in Maine. He had a show during my senior year in college and I visited it five times. His work, definitely. Sari Shryack, who is Not Sorry Art on Instagram. She is so good and she speaks so eloquently. Everybody, look her up. She has a good podcast too. And David Fulham, who he has passed away, but he instructed at my school before I ever attended the college. And I found a book of his work in the library and I fell in love with it. And the way he spoke about mixed media, that really intrigued me. And I managed to find a copy of the book on eBay at one point. And so now I have it forever.
[0:44:13] LHL: Oh, very cool.
[0:44:14] JH: But, yeah. Anyway, I know that wasn't very rapid.
[0:44:18] SW: It was great.
[0:44:18] LHL: No. Trust me, there's been lots longer. What is your favorite thing about New Hampshire?
[0:44:26] JH: Oh, everything's an hour away. I mean, we don't have desert. That's the only thing we don't have. But I can go to the ocean. I can go to the lake in a minute. I can go to the mountains. Yeah, we're really close to everything. I can go to Canada in not an hour, but a little bit more.
[0:44:42] LHL: Yeah, it really isn't that far.
[0:44:45] JH: Yeah, we've got everything. We've got a city kind of. Some of my students from bigger cities would disagree, but I think Manchester is enough for me. That's enough city.
[0:44:55] SW: Yep. Boston, if you're really desperate. Montreal, if you're really, really desperate for a city.
[0:45:01] JH: Yeah.
[0:45:01] LHL: I'll take Portland. Portland's good.
[0:45:02] SW: Portland's cool.
[0:45:03] LHL: I love this, nice small city.
[0:45:05] JH: But yeah, I think New Hampshire, we've kind of got everything you need. And as a nature person, there's a lot to explore. And it's in such a small space, you don't have to go very far to find it.
[0:45:16] SW: Absolutely. Absolutely. Beauty everywhere you look.
[0:45:19] LHL: Yes.
[0:45:19] SW: Two-part question. Are there any mediums that you haven't worked with yet that you'd like to and any mediums that you absolutely will not work with?
[0:45:28] JH: Okay. I'm a fan of Nakata and Portsmouth and I look at their enormous tiny art and a lot of people are working with flash paint. So I need to get my hands on something to try it because it sounds like it's kind of looks gouache, but acts like acrylic. But instead of being an acrylic polymer, it's a vinyl polymer. Yeah, that really interests me. I'm like, "How does that work?" One that I'll never try? Does it have to be visual?
[0:45:54] SW: No.
[0:45:54] LHL: No.
[0:45:55] JH: Okay. I don't think I'll ever do like filmmaking. Time-based media? Mm-mm. Don't have time for time.
[0:46:04] LHL: There is a motto right there.
[0:46:08] JH: Too much.
[0:46:10] LHL: Very cool answer. I would not expect that. That's awesome. Well, I mean, it is sad in a way because what films might be in your head?
[0:46:17] SW: I know. We'll never know.
[0:46:19] JH: I mean, I guess if a TikTok counts, then that's not true.
[0:46:21] SW: True. I know. I know.
[0:46:25] LHL: What's your favorite color?
[0:46:31] JH: Consulting. Okay, I wrote mustard yellow for clothes, orange for heart emoji of choice, and my car is green.
[0:46:36] LHL: I love it.
[0:46:37] SW: Whoa. Not only is mustard yellow. Also, my clothing color of choice.
[0:46:43] JH: I had to pick a mustard yellow sweater because I knew what my answer was.
[0:46:46] SW: Yes. But orange is also my heart emoji of choice.
[0:46:51] LHL: Yeah, I noticed that on Discord. You do that a lot.
[0:46:53] SW: Yes, I always use the heart emoji. The orange one, the orange heart emoji. My car is not green.
[0:46:59] JH: It's complimentary though. It's red.
[0:47:01] SW: - It is. It's red.
[0:47:02] JH: I know it's kind of superficial, it's truly superficial, but it did help me decide on this car.
[0:47:06] SW: Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[0:47:08] JH: Do you want the gray one? That's $1,000 more. I'm like, "I'm going to save $1,000 and have green."
[0:47:13] SW: Yeah. When you know nothing about cars, color first and then whatever, engine and stuff, second.
[0:47:20] JH: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I got both, which is awesome. Win-win. What's your favorite scent?
[0:47:28] JH: Oh shoot.
[0:47:30] LHL: You got it on your –
[0:47:31] JH: I know I do, but I didn't choose between two. I have spring, like the snow melting and stuff starting to wake up. And you can feel the seasonal depression just melting away. Or kind of goes hand-in-hand, line dried bed sheets.
[0:47:48] LHL: Ooh.
[0:47:48] SW: Ohh, yeah.
[0:47:49] JH: Yeah. My family's very environmental, especially my dad. The first day that it's warm enough that it will dry, sheets on the line. And then you get into bed and it's just like concentrated detergent smell with fresh air.
[0:48:02] SW: Yeah, brilliant. What's your favorite sound?
[0:48:07] JH: Cat activation noise. When you pet a cat that didn't expect you, they were sleeping, or they didn't hear you walk in, and they're like "purr".
[0:48:22] LHL: That was a really great sound effect. That was excellent.
[0:48:25] SW: We're going to make that one of the buttons.
[inaudible crosstalk 0:48:30].
[0:48:36] LHL: Definitely an answer we've never had before.
[0:48:38] SW: For sure.
[0:48:39] JH: Thank you.
[0:48:39] SW: And this isn't a game where someone wins. But I would say you're pretty close to winning rapid-fire so far.
[0:48:43] JH: Yes. How many points do I have?
[0:48:46] LHL: You really impressed us and shocked us in so many ways.
[0:48:50] SW: The game at the end of Jeopardy and then like the points show up. Wait, Jeopardy is not what I mean. I mean Family Feud.
[0:49:02] LHL: Favorite texture to touch?
[0:49:05] JH: I do miss clay. I had the ceramics minor and I have a wheel but I haven't used it in a while. And I miss clay. That and the answer that half people give, which is petting my cat and activating her.
[0:49:19] LHL: Yeah, activating the cat.
[0:49:22] SW: What's the most inspiring location you've traveled to?
[0:49:24] LHL: I have to say, Prince Edward Island. My family went every year growing up and they dressed me up as Anne of Green Gables.
[0:49:31] LHL: I saw your Anne print and I was like, "Oh, Anne with an E."
[0:49:34] JH: Yeah, definitely PEI. I want to go to Acadia this year. Maybe I'll get more inspired. We'll see.
[0:49:40] LHL: What is the last new thing you've learned?
[0:49:44] JH: Oh, it was an experiment I did with a painting. I sanded over a bad painting and I liked the way that the sanding looked. So I tried to plan for sanding on a higher layer and it didn't work. It sanded through the first one and I didn't want it to. I learned that sanding will go through all the layers.
[0:50:00] LHL: That is good to know.
[0:50:02] SW: Very specific.
[0:50:03] JH: Very specific.
[0:50:04] SW: I love it.
[0:50:05] JH: But it's the most recent.
[0:50:06] SW: Clincher your question. If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?
[0:50:12] JH: Definitely have been thinking about this one for a long time. I would tell like 15, 16, 17-year-old Jackie to seriously just get mental health help. They always say that you're not a burden but I felt like one anyway because that's what the depression wants you to think. And that is a symptom and I would tell her that's a symptom. Just get help. Your first prescription with $7 is not going to hurt your family.
[0:50:38] LHL: Yeah.
[0:50:39] JH: Yeah, it would be ask for help.
[0:50:42] SW: Brilliant. Beautiful advice.
[0:50:43] LHL: Yep. And very important.
[0:50:46] SW: Yep. Very important.
[0:50:47] LHL: It has been so much fun, a true joy to have you here. It feels like we've been bosom buddies for a long time.
[0:50:55] SW: It's from Anne of Green Gables.
[0:50:58] LHL: Diana. Yeah. You were not expecting that, Sarah.
[0:51:03] SW: I'm primed to giggle, okay?
[0:51:05] LHL: But no, seriously, this is awesome.
[0:51:07] SW: Thank you so much.
[0:51:09] JH: Yeah, thank you so much for asking me. Yeah, it's been such a pleasure.
[0:51:14] LHL: Thank you again, Jackie, for being on the show. And with that –
[0:51:17] LHL, SW, JH: Show us your creative guts.
[OUTRO]
[0:51:23] LHL: Another huge thank you to Jackie for finally joining us on Creative Guts.
[0:51:28] SW: I have no idea what to say. I've never smiled this much in my entire life and I'm in so much pain.
[0:51:34] LHL: I would say the word is like glee. I feel such glee after that interview.
[0:51:40] SW: It's that perfect balance of interviews that are funny and joyous. And also, we touched on serious things somehow along the way.
[0:51:50] SW: And she's just such – I mean, I said it and you laughed, but a bosom buddy. No, bosom friend. It absolutely feels like we are connected already, as in we've hung out constantly. And especially for me and her, there's an age gap, but I didn't feel it, you know? Maybe she's mature or I'm just a young kid.
[0:52:12] SW: Or maybe arts overrides the age gap.
[0:52:17] LHL: I think so. I think it's art and also the willingness of an open spirit to talk, converse, be curious. That's something I think we have in common. And she just produces a real breadth of work. It's really impressive.
[0:52:31] SW: Yeah. We talked about this especially with the printmaking, but there's something very accessible about not just her art in that way but the way that she talks about it. I feel like I don't always know all the art words, as in sort of not an artist, but I felt like I followed everything she said and understood and was fascinated by it. I learned a lot from her tonight. And it was really amazing.
[0:52:58] LHL: Yeah, I think she comes from a position of sharing is caring, probably. I feel like it's just a very authentic openness that is so enriching, it's so wonderful. I think that's what makes New Hampshire's art community so vibrant. And her work and her as a person is a perfect example of that.
[0:53:17] SW: Yes. Yes. This is probably my favorite episode of 2025 so far, and it is going to be really hard to compete with.
[0:53:25] LHL: Yeah. Yeah. Big smiles on this one. Thank you again, Jackie. Truly a pleasure.
[0:53:29] SW: Yes. If you want to check out Jackie's work, check out jackiehansonart.com. You can find Jackie Hanson on Instagram and Facebook, probably other places too. We'll drop those links in the episode description on our website, creativegutspodcast.com. Let you explore from there. You can also find us, Creative Guts podcast, on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
[0:53:50] LHL: You can also join our new Discord server. Creative Guts has a Discord server which you can access on our website. On the top right, there is a little purple button. Click on that. It'll bring you right to it. It's a growing community where creatives and non-creatives yet can inspire each other and connect.
[0:54:10] SW: A big thank you to Art Up Front Street for providing a space where Creative Guts can record.
[0:54:14] LHL: This episode was sponsored in part by the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts. Thank you to our friends in Rochester for their support of the show.
[0:54:20] SW: If you love listening and you want to support Creative Guts, you can make a donation, leave us a review, interact with our content on social media, purchase some merch, whatever you're able to do, we appreciate you.
[0:54:30] LHL: Thank you for tuning in. We'll be back next Wednesday with another episode of Creative Guts.
[END]