Room to breathe
Jen Oaks left the stifling world of advertising for the wide open pastures of illustration
By Danielle Austin
Published: March 10th, 2008 | 4:15pm
Discovering more about Jen Oaks is much like peering into one of her illustrations or sketchbooks – it’s like reading someone’s diary while they’re in the room. She’s open in both her artwork and words; she describes her life experiences and their effects on her art, “I went to college for graphic design/advertising, and I did that for seven years. I was an OK graphic designer, but I really grew to dislike advertising. Getting fired from yet another unsatisfying job in 2004 – and the subsequent unemployment – propelled me to rediscover art and illustration.”
Perhaps we all will inevitably one day find ourselves in a working position that is suffocating – Oaks went without air for seven years. During those years she continued her art, which she had started years before in an elementary school classroom with a valentine, “a big heart with a scalloped lace border.” In college, her work took the form of free-flowing sketchbooks. These visual diaries, mostly of her college years, are “full of boy angst… While I'm glad to be over that phase, I do miss the raw, naïve creativity I had then. The expression just came out of me and onto paper, with no struggle. Trying to do that at thirty is a lot harder than it was at nineteen. We tend to edit ourselves as we get older.”
Oaks’ sketchbook from 1999 when she studied in Vienna is a collage of Europe and youth as drawn by an Oklahoma girl seeing a new side of the world for the first time. “I came back with a huge respect for history that I didn't have before. I wanted to treasure old things, old buildings; the things people loved and used every day. I think that evolved into my current love for vintage textiles, kitchenware, and clothing.” One experience, years before, still affects her work today – strange that seeing something once can change how everything else appears afterwards. For Oaks, as an artist, this meant that her vision, her art, could never be the same.
Nowadays, Jen’s inspiration comes from simple sources. She dug out her roots from Oklahoma City and headed to sunny San Francisco, a city that has more to say to her. “I love the layers of beauty and grime in the Mission, where I live. I like looking at what people wear, the textures and patterns.” She seems to be one of those people that are capable of seeing beauty in hidden places both far away and close to home, finding meaning in everything from “Domesticity and the DIY movement” to “how my grandma's kitchen looked in the ‘60s and ‘70s.” As scattered as these sources of inspiration seem, they all connect in her artwork to form original images and a refreshing perspective.
Her recent work features several connected themes, one of the most prominent being music. Figures are drawn listening to headphones, combining the art of music and illustration. They act as expressions of the joy found in the everyday, the beautiful usual. Unfortunately, we must admire the music in silence. When asked what music was playing inside her pieces, Oaks said, “Andrew Bird, Neko Case, or the Flaming Lips, definitely.”
View more of Jen Oaks’ work online at jenoaks.com
Issue #35
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