I'm sorry I only talk about the apocalypse.

Hi. I’m Jen, and I’m obsessed with the apocalypse.

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

And not by choice.

Sure, I’ve always had a dark sense of humor. But it wasn’t until my first child was born that I started taking a hard look at the world and wondering, what does the future look like? And the more I pay attention, the more nothing seems certain anymore.

In 2017, my family lost their home to wildfires in California. Out of nowhere, the skies turned orange, and “Smoke” became a season. I became determined to prepare my family for unexpected disasters.

Every website I went to in search of answers was more boring than the last. They were all super right-wing (not me!) or dense and complicated.

I just wanted to know — WTF is a disaster plan?

Continue Reading

Jenfest 2011: The Souvenirs

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Every year I have a Jenfest souvenir.  Some years they don’t look much like something you would want to keep (like the personalized JENGO cards from last year) or the autographed photo of my silly headshot from 2003. But some of them are pretty awesome like the Jentrification bottle caps from 2008 or the match books from 2007.

This year I had thrown in the towel on the Jenfest souvenir tradition.  I just didn’t have any inspiration.  Thankfully, my friend Corrie did.  She said that bar hops are really fun when people all have matching mardi gras beads.

Fun!!  A google search found me extra plastic discs that I could personalize and attach.  Under budget and a fun souvenir!

As usual when Jenfest is concerned I got a little crazy-eyed and probably made too many. Oooh well.

My sister Alexandra helped me create the souvenirs until late last night. She also learned how to spell the word souvenir along the way.

Join us tonight at Jenfest 2011 The Bad Hair North Oakland Romp and take one home!!  Or just see me sometime in the next ten years and get an extra.  You can pick up one of the 2009 beer cap magnets while you’re at it. Continue Reading

When Does a Doodle Become an Art Piece?

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Of all the dozen or so museums Will and I saw in Europe last month, the exhibit that keeps coming up is one that neither of us liked.  At all.

At the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin we saw the exhibit Secret Universe, the works of Horst Ademeit.

Each day of Ademeit’s life, he would take a Polaroid of something that bothered him about the world and record his thoughts and complaints all over the edges.  He would number them, so he could keep track.

Horst Ademeit "5805" Archiv-Nr.: Ad 621 Mischtechnik / Polaroid 11 x 9 cm © Courtesy Galerie Susanne Zander, Köln

Only after Ademeit’s death, as the exhibit related, was his “body of work was discovered.” This body of work — these thousands of Polaroids lined were up, one by one, in numerical order forming a grid stretching through three rooms.

The ramblings of a disturbed man set out in the meticulous fashion in which he formed them for all to see.  This obsessive tracking of each day is something we have come to associate with psychosis or other mental illness.

Though we didn’t like the exhibit especially, we are still talking about.  It strikes me now as a wonderful glimpse into the pain of what it is to be human.  At least this man had an outlet for all the complaints that many of us swallow in the effort to be gracious human beings!

But at the same time, I don’t know if it’s art.  I wonder if perhaps it would be better characterized as anthropology.

But when a doodle become an art piece?  When you have thousands of them lined up side by side? Continue Reading

Villa Nova I La Getru, Spain

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

When I went away to college, I showed an interest in photography by signing up for a Photography course.

My father lent me his old Nikon camera– those were the days before digital cameras.  He gave me instructions, many of which where to help with navigating the manual camera.  The one that has stuck with me, and, I believe, has had the most lasting impact on my photography, was to hold the camera vertical in relation to the earth, to look for straight lines in the subject and to mirror them in my photo.

I thank my father on this Father’s Day for these instructions and for that indispensable advice.  Coming from a long line of artists on both sides, I know that I have many to thank for my ability to find a subject anywhere, and to look for the best possible manifestation of that subject.  But I know that realistically without my father’s guidance, I would have been thrown into the deep end — kicking and screaming with no way out, and that instead, I was gifted an incorrigible eye for photos, for art, and for life.

With this in mind on this Father’s Day, Will and I embarked on an adventure on our first day in Villa Nova I La Getru, Spain. With a richly colored country side, and character-filled landscape, there was hardly a lack of inspiration.  These are a few of the unedited photos I took. Continue Reading

Quick and Easy Gift Tags

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Wrapping presents is one of my favorite activities.

I went to my boyfriend’s Christmas last year for the first time ever, and noticed that the tradition in his family is unadorned, simple wrapping jobs–not the masterpieces of curling ribbon and contrasting wrapping papers of my parents’ Christmas.

This year I weighed my options: simplify my wrapping to fit in, or own my family’s tradition. It was an easy choice.

While wrapping I ran into the problem of needing gift tags. I considered various options, and decided to take the easiest route: fold a piece of wrapping paper in half, and write the message inside. Not only is it quick and easy and cheap, but it’s a great way to use the little bits that you wind up throwing away. Continue Reading

You Are Awesome (or else)

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I heard a tale of a man named Saint-Simon.  Every morning his valet would wake him and say, “Arise, sir!!  You have great things to do today!”

We can’t all have a valet to wake us with such inspiring words.  I created this little reminder of how awesome you are out of little bits of a Soap Opera Digest. The high resolution version is below.  Download it, print it out, frame it and look at it every day and smile.  Or make it your desktop background!

We all deserve to be reminded of how awesome we are as often as possible.  The world will conspire to bring us down– let’s work together to stay afloat!

Continue Reading

How many twitters are too many twitters?

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I started out with one twitter account: @jennifer_heller. I think I’ve had it for a little over two years and it’s only within the past year that I’ve started enjoying using it at all. I’ve heard others share a similar experience: it takes some time, but it’s addictive as hell once you get into it. I can attest to that, but as someone balancing many competing priorities, it’s hard to prioritize reading hundreds of tweets a day. Especially since I’ve steadily added other twitter accounts to my list.

When I launched Van Gogh My Pet in the second half of 2009, I added a second twitter account: @vangoghmypet. This one, I thought, would concentrate on my pet and art related thoughts and would attract a different variety of people than @jennifer_heller. It seems to work; @vangoghmypet is on 42 pet and art related lists and my followers have steadily grown.

This graph of Van Gogh My Pet tweets verses website visits suggest that the tweets have very little if not nothing to do with increasing visits.

When I decided to brand my design and communications work as Artsy Geek Designs, it was a natural progression to add another twitter: @artsygeekdesign. Here I would tweet about my geeky subjects–web design, coding, communications. And maybe some art. Hey, @artsygeekdesign and @vangoghmypet can overlap a little right?? A further reason for separating @artsygeekdesign from @jennifer_heller is that I fully intend to expand and work with others in this business. They should be able to tweet from the business too!

I made the decision a few weeks ago to consolidate all my blogging here at www.jenniferheller.com. Believe me, I do not miss maintaining a blog at Van Gogh My Pet, and I can say with 100% certainty that I am not sorry I didn’t add yet another blog on at Artsy Geek Designs.

This January, Will and I are launching Lushes in Love, our new blog devoted to our endless love and appreciation for cocktails. You can check out the design–I put it up over the weekend, but we have yet to move in. I’ve already signed us up for a twitter: @lushesinlove and tweeted something like five high quality tweets. Thankfully, Will will also have to help with the @lushesinlove tweeting, but this addition marks my fourth twitter!

Who wants to follow a long-ass stream of nothing but links? Do you??

And all of a sudden I’m asking myself…to what end? Sure I like Twitter okay, but I don’t looooove it the way I love knitting, web design and painting. I love people, but most of the time I feel like Twitter is just filled with robots endlessly sending their links out hoping for clicks. Sometimes I worry that to the other twitter users, I’m just another four Twitter accounts doing the same thing. Indeed a quick googling found this post that proposes that robots do better on Twitter than humans!

Perhaps it would be best to take a cue from my decision to simplify my blogging and simplify my twitter? One twitter, four subjects… perhaps that would make me a more interesting person to follow in general?

Perhaps I should embrace the robotic future of twitter and create automated twitter robots for all four… That just isn’t my style though. I believe in sincere, honest communication. When I notice that someone I follow is being a twitter-bot, I immediately unfollow.

So what to do? Nothing? Consolidate? Automate?

Oh, the problems associated with living a life on the internet. I’d appreciate any sound advice please!!

(This post could also be titled “How many Facebook pages are too many Facebook pages?”)

Value of Experience

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I spent yesterday updating Van Gogh My Pet for the holiday season.

Van Gogh My Pet was the first website I used the awesome Thesis theme for WordPress as the basis for the design.

Back then, the reason I chose Thesis was because it allowed the customizations that I make to the theme to be stored in only two files in just one directory.  This makes my design invincible to updates to the theme and WordPress. Continue Reading