Do you think growing up in an art studio makes you an artist? Yes, I grew up in my mother’s studio, and I seem compelled to create. I was introduced to my medium when I was ten. My mother instructed me on how to carve a linoleum block for a Christmas card. However, the next time I worked in this medium was in a Textile Design class at Western Kentucky University. I was introduced to batik, tie-dye, silkscreen, and block printing. I loved it all. I even taught a Basic Design class at Western after I graduated. Later, in graduate school at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, I minored in Textile Design. Batik was my thing then, but when I almost set my house on fire and nearly destroyed all the automatic dry cleaning machines in town, I changed to block printing. I became a full-time instructor at Miami University of Ohio in the fall of 1975, but I continued to experiment in my printing and even took more design classes. I started designing vests and kimonos that I had printed with my newly carved spiral designs. Ironically, they were showing in an Art to Wear boutique in San Francisco. After three years in Ohio, I made a paradigm shift, quit teaching, and moved back to Kentucky in 1978.  However, this change gave me time to work on my printing techniques and design motifs. I had two one-person shows in Owensboro, Kentucky, worked summer fairs, and began to show nationally my quilted, lino-cut printed garments. Following that, I was asked to teach the Textile Design class at Western Ky. University, ironically the class that inspired my artistic direction.  In 1983, my husband and I decided to move to Santa Cruz, California. Finding that the streets are not paved with gold, it got harder to keep my art going.  I taught a Beginning Clothing Construction at Cabrillo College, but my classes were cut due to an economic downturn.  Again, I had another shift. It was time to go back to my art, but it needed a message.  I started studying symbols across the world and across time periods. I created story blocks that reflected birth, marriage, journey, death, creation, bliss or, in other words, basic archetypes of human experience. This cemented me as an artist. Later in 2000, I started printing on silk scarves and placing them in local galleries. I became an Open Studio artist in 2003. Today I print my simpler designs of flowers, shells, and geometric motifs for art to wear, and I print my more detailed symbolic blocks on mulberry paper.  My art continues to evolve, but I have not wavered from my original lino-cut medium, and I still show off that first linoleum block.
Jody Bare
Bareprint

This is just my interpretation, you may view my work and dream your own story.  Ask me about my other stories.  Thanks, Jody Bare