MEET THE ARTIST Courtney Dorothy Jane is an artist and designer located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is currently a senior at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, where she is double majoring in Illustration and Photography. She always thought of these as separate interests. Only recently has she begun to notice threads that connect all of her work, like magic and fantasy. She has also begun to play with overlapping elements between photography and illustration.
Illustration Her illustration work varies in content but always has a similar style and often uses elements of patterns. Her use of flat colors, simple shading, and stylized imagery often gears her work towards children. She has strong interest in children’s textile designs, and children’s book illustrations. She also looks at young adult trends to inspire her work. In her collection “American Dessert,” she researched plants in American desserts and created a selection of patterns that would be used for a clothing line. This collection uses simple shapes to create plants and dessert landscapes, using warm colors to represent the hot climate in these areas.
American Dessert, 2015
Even with single illustrations these traits continue. We can see this in a collection of Love Stamps titled, “Puppy Love.” She combines the dog’s simple design with untraditional color choices and patterns that cover all of the dogs. This adds a playful and sweet elements that pushes the idea of love.
Puppy Love, 2015 In her 20th Annual Croquet Ball poster created for Penfield, she uses these same elements to create a fantasy scene where Cinderella is heading off to the Croquet ball in her mallet drawn carriage. She uses delightful colors with simple shading, and patterns to create a dreamy poster aimed for children. She uses her patterns as motifs to push ideas further. This is seen in the mallet and croquet ball pattern on the ground, the wicket pattern inside the carriage and the croquet game being played through the stars in the sky. These patterns add decorative elements to otherwise blank spaces.
Penfield Croquet Ball, 2015
Photography
Courtney’s thought process for photography is very different. Photography is often thought of in two ways. People are either hunters or farmers. Farmers create their photographs, much like how an illustration is created. They build the scene, place the elements, and choose the framing all before the camera is even touched. Courtney is usually a hunter, though, searching for her images in daily life. She finds herself drawn to things, and then captures it. She is often intrigued by the presence of light, and feelings of magical elements.
Domestic, 2014 This was her focus in her series Domestic. She started by capturing the presence of dramatic lighting in her family house. It was an exploration of the way her family lived and kept their home, with natural light often used as a spotlight. There is a dramatic, beautiful clutter in her pieces that she looked for, but never created. She waited for the moment to arrive, and then captured it.
Recently she has begun experimenting with an aspect of mapping in her pieces. This is not only an adventure in the realm of being a farmer, but also a step toward combing her two ways of working. In her series entitled, “Forces,� she looks at the presence of unknown forces that are apart of daily life. She is again inspired by natural light, and possibly it’s role as a force in our lives. She captures images, and then adds thin, white mapping lines that trace over the images creating geometric shapes. They resemble strings and are pulled to a singular point.
Forces, 2015
Forces, 2015
Interview with Q: What are your intentions in your illustrations and photography? A: Originally I felt like they were very different. I always saw my photographic work as different from my illustrative. Only recently have I really begun to see similarities. Often my intents are to take viewers to magical places, to make them smile, to wonder, to enjoy a playful fantasy, or to drawn attention to presences in our daily lives. These are all very similar ideas to me. They stem from my love of magic, and stories I was told as a kid. I often reminisce about these stories and want to embody them in some of my work. The unknown, magical places and things of the world are what interest me passionately, and to be able to share these moments with my audience is my greatest desire. Q: Can you talk about how this is shown in your work? A: Of course. Although these ideas may not be present directly in all my work, they are usually the seed of my inspiration for it. These ideas cross over both my illustrative work, as well as my photographic. They can be found in my Penfield Croquet Ball poster. It is about a story you’re told, or have seen as a kid. It is an interpretation of the Cinderella story, a playful rendition that plays off the idea of a Croquet Ball, and speaks to elements of magic and fantasy. These same connections are drawn in my latest photography work, Forces. I’m inspired by magical, beautiful elements in our daily lives, including natural light. I am then mapping these forces, as I call them, with white lines on the photographs. These add interesting shapes and bring them past a simple photograph.
Courtney Q: Do you have any work that has frustrated your intentions, or caused you change them? A: I certainly have work that may not directly fall in line with some of these intentions, but certainly nothing that has frustrated or changed them. As artists we are constantly growing and changing and learning. It is unfair to say work has frustrated my intentions. My intentions for individual pieces are often different, play off different ideas and I talk about different things, but that isn’t a bad thing. We are versatile creatures, and my interests won’t stay in one area. I will have illustration projects that must say different things because of how the client wants it look, and what they want it to do. Similarly I will have different series of photographs that will aim to talk about different ideas or topics, and I’m ok with my work changing my intents. It has to for me to grow.