Jaclyn Janis

Project Description

Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Jaclyn grew up taking art lessons and regularly drawing and painting. When she attended college, she pursued the sciences, putting her creative practices aside. After a two-decade hiatus, Jaclyn found her way back to art when she took a printmaking course in 2023 while temporarily living in northern Virginia. She has considered Maine to be home since 2016.

At the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Virginia, Jaclyn pursued relief and reduction woodblock and linocut printmaking classes through The Art League. She was an affiliate printmaker in the Discover Graphics Atelier before returning home to Scarborough in May 2024. Jaclyn currently works out of her studio at Running with Scissors in Portland. Her pieces are all hand drawn, hand carved, and hand pulled.

In her prints, Jaclyn seeks to interpret her experience with the natural world as a birder and general outdoor enthusiast. During her time in Virginia, printmaking was a way to channel her nostalgia for Maine and put those coastal landscapes in front of her eyes again. Jaclyn is particularly drawn to reduction printmaking, as the technique requires patience and puzzle solving. In this technique, a repetitive process of inking, printing, and carving the same block builds layers of colors to create a final image, destroying the block in the process. These iterations on the same image slow life down and allow Jaclyn to commemorate scenes that hold special places in her heart and mind.