"Gandalf The Gray, Hornbeam Wood, North Carolina, 61 inches tall" (c) 2018, 2021 Stu Jenks.
Price: $395, shipping included. Simply contact me via my email address at stujenks@gmail.com or Facebook message me, if you would like to purchase one of my pieces. Payments can be made with Paypal, Venmo or credit card with Square. All pieces are signed with its title, and can be hung from the wall. Love y'all, Stu.
Below is a vision statement given to an art gallery in Tucson, Arizona, regarding my Extended Family Series. It was good a year ago. It still applies now, with just a couple of small changes.
This was the first piece I made, before this all became a thing.
Over the past couple of months, I have posted photos of all the wall pieces from this series that I still own, along with prices, some text about each of them, etc. Most are for sale, others are not. And I would like to get in some art shows here in North Carolina and elsewhere once COVID has fully passed, so I have to post the work so people can see it. And buy it.
To look at all of this work, just click on “Extended Family Series” over on the left hand side of this page.
Another reason for putting all this work up on the web is simply this: I can hear the tick, tok, tick, tok of the passing of time. I did have major cancer surgery in 2020 you know. Someday, hopefully not soon, I ain't going to be eating quesadillas and drinking coffee on this planet no mo. I'll just be an angel ghost haunting Alexa and all my loved ones. If I don't get all of this art up on my site, there won't be a record. Facebook and Twitter just don't cut it.
Final reason is I want to make some money. The Jenks ain't rich folk, and this is how I've made a good portion of my income over the decades. Baby needs a new pair of shoes.
Over 90 pieces are here on my site now. Most work is for sale. Shipping costs (which are pretty expensive) are included in the sale price.
Love y'all.
Keep the faith and remember, there are more good people than bad in this old world. A lot more.
Stu.
Vision Statement for James Schaub at Tohono Chul Park, Tucson, Arizona (with a couple of changes in the text in 2021.)
It began simply as a way not to travel completely down a dark shame spiral to the bottom of a cold hole of emotional and financial ruin, when I was repeatedly being turned down for work in Greensboro, North Carolina, in the fall of 2018 and the winter of 2019. I would investigate the woods and hills of the Piedmont of North Carolina in between lengthy online applications and nerve-raking interviews. I began to learn the names of the trees and I found some self-compassion from discovering a beautiful piece of wood in the forest, then bringing that stick back home, striping, grinding, sanding, and oiling the wood, and it becoming a lovely walking stick.
Most times these sticks were functional, but many times, they echoed the form of a walking stick and would be impractical on the trail.
Then in the spring of 2019, I moved back to Tucson for work (Thank God I found work), but the meditative artistic compulsive bug of making walking sticks continued with the woods and plants of Arizona: the saguaros, ocotillos, mesquites, junipers, agaves, ironwoods and aspens.
Then, from a suggestion from my good friend, the renowned potter Hamish Jackson, they went from leaning against a wall to hanging off the wall.
Then a big idea hit me one night in 2019, of making wall pieces that represent The Extended Family we all have: our relatives living and dead, our in-laws, our close friends, our wives and husbands, our current and past partners-in-crime, who in little and big ways enrich our lives every day, making living on the planet a blessing and a joy, for simply being who they are.
Over 90 of these wall pieces have been created so far. I’ve gone through all my family, my wife, my close friends and most of the people I know, so I’ve expanded the series to include pieces that honor historic and current women and men whom I deeply admire: artists like Vollis Simpson, and Auguste Rodin, musicians like Dave Grohl, The Edge, Bono and John Prine, social justice warriors like Martin Luther King Jr., The Rev. William Barber, Thurgood Marshall, Ibram X. Kendi and Ida B. Wells. I’ve even thrown in a few fictional characters from my novels, like Gidleigh Moore, Peter Saum, Jr., Zeeba and Balthzar. They are real people to me too, who I love very much.
Bottom line is this.
I’m not going to run out of good people anytime soon.
#extendedfamilyseries, #stujenks, #hornbeam