Making art a career

By LEE WARD / THE INDEPENDENT

ASHLAND May 01, 2008 10:38 am

— J. Bird Cremeans is a juggler, not of balls or rings, but of jobs.
Cremeans, 25, has several part-time occupations centered around art.
She is a graphic artist for Glenn’s Sporting Goods in Huntington, she teaches Photoshop at Marshall University Community and Technical College and drawing at Ashland Community and Technical College, where she plans to teach some children’s art classes during camp. She also works as a framer at Aladdin’s Art Gallery and she’s a studio consultant at the Pendleton Art Center, where she keeps a studio.
The Barboursville resident also keeps busy with commissioned work she gets as a caricature artist.
As a high school student, Cremeans studied every medium she could — drawing, painting, pottery — in an effort to learn about art.
After graduation, she attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh where she studied animation with hopes of working as an animator for a children’s cartoon or with video games.
“Outsourcing has put a damper on me and a lot of other animators across the country,” she said, adding the only cartoon that isn’t outsourced is South Park.
As jobs were scarce, she started taking work in graphic design.
“It was an area I was lacking in, but I’ve learned on the job,” she said. “I was self-educated in graphic design. There is so much you have to keep up on with trends and new technology.”
For a while, she focused on photography.
“There are so many good photographers in the area,” she said. “Then I found out that my caricatures were doing well, so now that’s my main area.”
Although she still shoots weddings and portraits, Cremeans sells quick, black and white caricatures for $5 each. She also does live color caricatures for $25 per person and from photographs for $35. She sets up at events in the area but also takes commissions.
She said she was introduced to caricature while still a student in Pittsburgh when caricature artist Angela Love visited and spoke to students.
Since then, Cremeans said she has read and studied more about the art form as she has gained experience.
She got some unconventional experience, too.
“In animation class, we would do caricatures of each other and of the teachers and pass them around just for fun,” she recalled.
Not the least of her activities is the Web site she maintains called firstfridaynews.com, which is a way to keep the public informed about activities during Ashland’s First Friday Art Walk. She said there are about 40 members who receive her regular e-mails about the event.
Tonight at First Friday events, Cremeans will debut a new collection called “Bring the Outside In,” which is a series of urban and nature photos in HDR, or high dynamic range, which is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures than normal digital imaging techniques.
A few prints will be available at the Pendleton but can be purchased online.

J.Bird Cremeans can be reached at (304) 733-1395 or at jbirdistheworde@yahoo.com.
LEE WARD can be reached at lward@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2661.

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