Artists & Crafts

Jimmy French and Shauna Finn are two artists. They’re also a very nice couple and live in an apartment in a Downtown Brownstone. It’s a warm, cozy home. There’s lots of different types of spaces open during the Studio Tour, the early fall event of the Jersey City Arts. It’s important to remember studio when it comes to the studio tour. Something like a 100 places are now listed in the tour. I think the term studio is not always applicable. One of the most fun things is to actually see an artist’s studio, see the work, where they work, their life.

I think I’m like most. On Saturday, it’s mainly the festival and Sunday it’s mainly the tour. I make it a point to stop at a few places, sort of do a route in the afternoon. I recommend though just making a point of seeing someplace for no other reason than you know nothing about it. Thus I stopped here. Finn & French reminded me of the studio part, because you get to see the work space, art within the context of a life.

They’re both artists and teachers of art. Shauna is the painter and she had a recent work, a larger canvas, dark and impressionistic, a woman with a face obscured sitting in the shadows, birds in the background, autumn leaves fallen to the side. It seemed illuminated by Autumn twilight, or is that just before a Fall dawn. Maybe the early Autumn weather outside prompted me to reflect on that.

The picture was in her workshop, a little bigger than a closet. There were paintings in a dark style, people and animals. Very compelling work.

I like the light pastel colors of the bird feathers. Jim was showing his wood carvings, bird figures and bird houses. Clean, wonderful pieces of folk art. He explained to me that they are the products of their small company, Finch Arts & Crafts; Finch being an ancronym of their two surnames, French and Finn. I’m no ornithologist, but I swear some of the carvings were of finches, was that a finch in the background of the main painting?

I don’t know. But there was a nature theme for both the arts and crafts in their lovely home. It was very gracious of them to open it up to the public for the studio tour. Seeing their work within this brief glimpse of their life was a special experience.

Visit: Finch Arts & Crafts Visit Here



Visit Shauna Finn here