Make your own damn job or pay for play, or Make Art and Give it Away.

From life, I’ve learned all three of these concepts work.

I discovered early that if your grandmother was the best seamstress in town, you got to play Mary every year in your local nativity tableau. Another bit of Jennie history—and a star is born.

My Grama was the best at sewing and just about everything else. Hilda Mary Rose Groves Cooley, Grama, made dolls, unique and often recycled. She sewed, crocheted, knit and painted. Her friends and neighbors brought her incredible celluloid, composition and porcelain dolls from their childhoods to embellish and refurbish along with her original ones. My grandfather, Grover Cooley, made appropriate doll furniture for many of them in his workshop behind the well-known home at 26th Street and Arrowhead Avenue.
Christmas comes every year and soon after the “sale,” and, so, who gets to play Mary? I do.  Hilda would make an amazing costume from her recycled stash. I would choose my favorite doll for that year’s Jesus and my mother, Tommy Cooley, who loved glitter and gold spray paint, made a halo from the top of a candy box. So, from all this, I learned to make dolls, create jobs and make art and give it away.
 
This Grama-inspired art is a monotype using a solar plate affixed to a hollow-core door. I then painted and sealed it with a matte finish. This piece will be presented in March at Expo New York City, booth S247! It is also available as a magnet card or giclee in a variety of sizes.

Once a year they held a “doll sale” in their home in San Bernardino, California, sold the dolls and gave all the money to their church, Saint John’s Episcopal Church in San Bernardino. Their sale was often covered by The Sun Telegram, the daily paper.

This unique and-historically inspired work by Artist Jennie Cooley features content created with whimsy and mixed media that will be the center piece for her show at Expo New York in March. The line from the family diary is painted over a solar plate photo of three generations of Cooley women, affixed to a recycled hollow core door and painted.  The solar plate  was created and printed as a monotype on a Laguna etching press in the gallery. Cooley’s work has been  described somewhere between Henry Darger, South Park and Gary Trudeau often capturing a moment with darkness and humor.

Cooley’s Great, great grandfather, protesting plural marriage in salt lake led the last wagon train out of Utah before the Mountain Meadow massacre. Captured and returned to a meeting with Brigham Young, George Mills Cooley negotiated his and the wagons release and continued on with a Utah passport to settle what would become San Bernardino California. A Giclee of the original was recently presented to the creators of HBO’s Big Love. The original and a limited edition of Giclees are available thru the Jennie Cooley Gallery,826 Canyon Rd. Santa Fe or jenniecooley.com

Next Blog: Now What!