Art & Life with Fern Shaffer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Fern Shaffer.

Fern, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
My father was a house painter, so I grew up with brushes, paint and canvas (drop clothes). I decided at age eight that I would be an artist and art was my major throughout school. When I was in high school, I had an art teacher who was using Plaster of Paris, and I could not stand how that material felt on my hands. I asked if I could be excused from working with it. He said yes and set me up in a corner with brayers and printing inks. He let me work on my own the whole semester and at the end of the year he entered my work in a national competition and I won a medal. That was the encouragement I needed to set my path. In 1981, I joined Artemisia Gallery; a woman’s collective in Chicago, where I served as president for 12 years. I have met the most incredible people who have enriched my life. I am always learning from my friends — writers, critics, editors, curators, gallery owners, coworkers—and all have contributed to my way of understanding the world, which is getting stranger everyday.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
An idea or vision comes to me, and I work on it until it matches what I am feeling and seeing. It is not an exact representation in my mind but a sense of something. Then I struggle to work it out. I can stay with a subject for an idea or vision comes to me, and I work on it until it matches what I am feeling and seeing. It is not an exact representation in my mind but a sense of something. Then I struggle to work it out. I can stay with a subject for 20 to 30 years. I can work small or large. The scale is important to the idea, whether I use intimate or public space. My Healing Plant Series addressed the importance of plants to our well-being. I painted them as portraits, 5 x 7 feet. Plants and trees communicate with each other, and that fascinates me. When I was asked to participate in an exhibition about the passenger pigeon, I was to represent the Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois area, where the birds once lived. What stood out to me was the fact that all the birds are gone– the last passenger pigeon had died and I saw only the image of ghost pigeons flying among the DNA. Some older work was about energy, which is all around us, and how we attract it to ourselves and use it.

I worked collaboratively for 29 years with Othello Anderson on large paintings and rituals. The paintings were about the environment, either warnings or memories of what the world was like or how it would look in the future. The rituals were about healing the earth using prayers as a form of energy. The 9th Ritual was about the wet lands and how we were draining them into extinction. The photograph becomes the memory of the ritual.

Now, I am thinking about time and how we count time: years, days, weeks, hours or minutes. The moon has become my symbol; the full moon occurs monthly in smaller units than years. Now the question becomes how many full moons have you seen instead of how many years have you have lived.

What responsibility, if any, do you think artists have to use their art to help alleviate problems faced by others? Has your art been affected by issues you’ve concerned about?
Artist reflect the history in their subject matter: paintings of battle scenes, religious schemes. churches, clothing, weapons, landscapes, ships and etc. I am influenced very much by the current environment, the climate changes, the fires, the loss of plants and trees, the air we breathe, the chemicals in our food, our water, our clothing. I think artists are influenced by the events around them no matter what year it is.

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
fernshaffer.com
wikipedia/fernshaffer
Portland Art Museum, Portland. OR
Museum of Contemporary Art, Medellin, Columbia, South America
“Reenchantment of Art” by Suzi Gablik

Contact Info:

• Website: fernshaffer.com
• Phone: 8474947884
• Email: fjshaffer@gmail.com

Image Credit:
Othello Anderson photos of Rituals.

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