Archive for 2011

>A worthy Memorial Day cause

Posted by Jessica Jewett 1 Comment »

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This is the face of your ancestors. He’s a young Civil War soldier. No matter what war your ancestors fought, they all went into it as innocently and bravely as this young man. Many of them never came home.

While you’re guzzling beer, barbecuing, and sitting by the pool with your families and friends, please remember that Memorial Day is not just a party and a day off work. This is a day on which we are supposed to stop and remember the men and women who “gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”* Put down the beer and find someone in the military or a veteran in the military and say thank you. Find the graves of your ancestors who fought for their country and lay flowers for them. Donate to battlefield preservation before it’s all eaten up by commercial development.

One might think my bias towards the Civil War makes me ignore other soldiers on Memorial Day but the truth is Memorial Day evolved because of the Civil War. It is estimated that somewhere between 620,000 and 700,000 casualties were tallied in that war of a total fighting force of approximately 3 million soldiers. If you do the math, that is roughly 1 casualty per every 5 soldiers (in NKOTB terms since a lot of you know me because of them – 1 New Kid of the 5 was likely to have been killed). That is roughly 20% of all soldiers becoming casualties. That is roughly 155,000 casualties per year over four years. In 1860, there were 31,443,321 citizens and slaves populating the US, which translates to roughly 10% of the population in active combat. America has not seen numbers like that in any war since the Civil War. There were more casualties in the Civil War than in every other American war combined to date. Think of 9/11 happening about five or six times per year over four years. That was what it was like to live during the Civil War. That is why Memorial Day evolved.

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war). It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 – 363) to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays), though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis’ birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.**

Memorial Day flags at Arlington National Cemetery.

People usually ask me what they can do when they read my Memorial Day blogs. I approach this in two ways.

1.) I encourage people to adopt a soldier serving overseas today. I have done this many times and I use www.adoptaussoldier.org now. I was using www.adoptaplatoon.org but there are allegations now that it’s a scam so I jumped ship with them.

2.) Battlefield preservation is a must. Nearly 20% of Civil War battlefields have already been destroyed by commercial and residential development. Only 15% of Civil War battlefields that still exist are actually protected by the National Park Service. We cannot depend on the government to protect these hallowed places. Organizations like the Civil War Preservation Trust have been working for years to protect what remains of Civil War battlefields but they need our help to do it. Please go to www.civilwar.org to read about how you can help protect our heritage and make donations.

*Source: the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln, 1863.
**Source: http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html

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>My art

Posted by Jessica Jewett 4 Comments »

>People seemed to respond the best to my art in my last blog, so I thought I would show all of the pieces that I have saved on my computer. Most people were exposed to my art a few years ago while I was working on a portrait of Jonathan Knight as a gift, which he still has as far as I know. Some people thought I was making it up, that I wasn’t really working with my mouth, that it was really my brother doing it, etc. Yeah, I heard about you. You know who you are. So I had my brother take pictures while I was actually doing the work. To dispel any doubts, here you go.

Blending Jon’s forehead.

Still blending Jon’s forehead.

There you go. If there are still any doubts, I will post a video. There’s nothing I hate more than being called a liar or a fraud!

ANYWAY! 🙂

Artistic talent runs in my family. My mother and father were both professional quality artists. My brother is too. The same goes for my paternal grandfather and I was lucky enough to be sent some examples of his paintings after he died. Here are two of them.

Self-portrait.

Study of Renaissance art.

For me, I was trained by my maternal grandmother first in drawing and watercolors beginning when I was about 4-years-old. She taught me figure drawing, perspective, light and shadow, etc. I was drawing and painting before I was reading and writing. I did a watercolor when I was 6-years-old of a silhouette of a wheat field in sunlight that was hung in Shriner’s Hospital in St. Louis, where I grew up, and my grandmother entered me in several local art contests. I guess she was a little bit of a stage mother about it.

As I grew up, I broke away from her teaching a bit because she was all about nature, whereas I much preferred portraiture. I was much more comfortable with and better at people in my work. I developed myself into a charcoal artist and pretty much abandoned watercolors by the time I was about 10-years-old. I had no formal training until I was in high school. My art instructor was a professional artist and really worked with me on developing my strengths. He wanted to see me become a professional portrait artist and he was hoping I would go to the Chicago Art Institute but I could not afford the tuition. It was in high school that I learned to use professional quality colored pencils and acrylic paint. Some of my pieces were exhibited in traveling galleries and a museum director said I shouldn’t accept anything less than a $400 fee for my work.

Since high school, I have made some money doing portrait work but this is not the eighteenth and nineteenth century where portrait artists could actually support themselves in their profession. Interest in art just isn’t there anymore. I’m living in the wrong century! Now I use art as a creative outlet as opposed to trying to earn a living. I still feel most comfortable with charcoal work but I have begun teaching myself oil painting this year and I find that very easy as if …. wait for it …. I have been an oil painter in previous lifetimes.

Here are examples of my work that I have on my computer.

An unfinished stage of the Jon portrait.

Jonathan Knight. Charcoal on paper. (Camera washed it out.)

Lying Girl. Charcoal on paper.

The Goddess. Colored pencil on paper.

Lovers. Charcoal on paper.

Africa. Acrylics on canvas. (Sorry it’s blurry.)

Kevin Richardson. Charcoal on paper. (Sorry it’s blurry.)

Cruising Couple. Commission. Charcoal on paper.

Venice. Acrylics on paper.

Freehand Flower. Watercolor pencil on paper.

Civil War soldiers. Page from my sketchbook. Charcoal on paper.

Civil War soldier. Page from my sketchbook. Charcoal on paper.

Native American Lovers. Colored pencil on paper.

Maine. Colored pencil on paper.

Scarlett and Rhett. Unfinished. Charcoal on paper.

Woman. Page from my sketchbook. Charcoal on paper.

Dreaming Images. Page from my sketchbook. Charcoal on paper.

So there you have it. My portfolio is like 12-years-old and being held together by duct tape so I don’t feel much like digging for other pieces right now. All of my old sketchbooks are in storage too. I’ve been doing studies of Impressionist painting this year since that is my favorite artistic movement, but I’m not an Impressionist painter. I’m more of a Realism or Neoclassical or Rococo painter.

Here is my current project.

My current project.
This is what it will look like. I’m studying Monet.
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Getting to know me

Posted by Jessica Jewett 9 Comments »

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Thanks to Donnie Wahlberg and Jonathan Knight, I have acquired a whole mess of new people poking around my internet life. That’s a Southern phrase, by the way. A whole mess of ____ means a lot of ____. I decided it might be helpful if I posted a blog introducing myself since I have hundreds of people who only know me as “the girl Donnie watched in the pool on the cruise”. There is a lot more to me than New Kids on the Block.

Shocking, I know. Hahaha!

So I hope this little blog gives you an idea of who I am since I’m all about developing friendships that encompass all aspects of life, not just one.

To start, there is my inner circle. You will see me talking to and about them the most. There is Sissy (SissyHand), Maryka (MMBoxy), Abbie (abblielicious613), Michelle (4everddubangel), Diane (di181), Wendy (gwenid1701), Dena (Denaaaa), Susannah (SmittenKitten4D), Codie (GingerFierce), Katy (Dannys_Woodshed), Tina (JonsTubeGirl), Angela (JKsWhoppergirl), Kimmy (BigUps2NKOTB) and a few other people. These are the ones who have been with me the longest and know me the best. They are all wonderful people who deserve love too. I often refer to Sissy as my wifey and I make jokes about playing with her boobs and stuff but we are not gay, lol. We just play around!

My legal name is Jessica Jones but you’re going to see me call myself Jessica Jewett too. I use Jewett as like a stage name in my professional life because a publisher told me a long time ago that Jones is a very forgettable name that won’t leave an impression on anyone. At that point, I adopted Jewett as my professional name. I am a Jewett on my maternal side and it’s an important name in New England and American history. My ancestor, Sarah Orne Jewett, was also an author in the nineteenth century. So you can call me Jones or Jewett. I answer to both.

My disability is called Arthrogryposis. I get a lot of questions about it. Basically, I have very limited flexibility, low muscle tone, some nerve damage, and my tendons and ligaments are mostly too short, causing my hands, feet and knees to be bent. My form of Arthrogryposis is pretty severe and rare. Usually people with this condition can walk with crutches or a walker but I was born before doctors really understood how to treat it. Since I can’t use my hands, I do everything with my mouth like typing, writing, art, reading books, etc. I can feel everything and I can move my body, so this is not a spinal cord injury. It’s not true paralysis. It’s just a very limited range of motion and strength. I’ve had almost 20 surgeries in my life and I’m facing major foot surgery as soon as doctors figure out how to go about it. Think of Jon’s foot surgery but more intense.

I’m an author and an artist. I have been doing both since I was a small child. My mother says I wrote my first poem when I was 6-years-old and I started drawing and painting when I was 3-years-old. I published a novel when I was 25, a Civil War story called From the Darkness Risen http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004LX0FFW and a few years later, I published a nonfiction book about reincarnation called Unveiled: Fanny Chamberlain Reincarnated http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004MDLSUC … I want to get into screenplays next. I’ve written a few for fun but I think I would like doing it for real. Regarding my art, I usually prefer charcoal pencil because it’s easier to handle without hands but I have begun teaching myself oil painting this year. I like it a lot more than I expected. Some of you may know that I did a charcoal portrait of Jon a few years ago that he kept. Here’s a picture. Below that are a few other pieces I’ve done.

Jon in charcoal before he was finished.

Me with Jon in charcoal. The camera kind of washed out the details.

Lovers in charcoal. I did this in high school.

The goddess in colored pencil. I did this in high school.

Maine in colored pencil. I did this in high school.

Another thing you should know about me is that I’m a historical researcher and genealogist as well. History is my biggest interest. I have something like 300 books on the Civil War and the nineteenth century. I even prefer reading authors from the nineteenth century as opposed to modern authors. I do a lot of things with historical preservation, battlefield preservation, etc. I’m a Civil War reenactor as well and I have been doing that since 1994. One day I hope to be able to afford a wheelchair from the nineteenth century to make my portrayal more accurate and educate the public but antique wheelchairs usually start around $3,000. Crazy expensive. Here is one of my Civil War photographs. I went to a photographer in Gettysburg who was the principle photographer on movies like Gettysburg and Gods and Generals. This photograph was done on a glass plate using the exact same methods used in the 1860s.

I sat for an 1860s glass plate photograph.

At a ball in Gettysburg conversing with a nice Union soldier.

Another 1860s photography session in Gettysburg, although this is just a color picture my brother took.

My brother and I putting an American flag on the 20th Maine monument in Gettysburg.

The next thing you should know about me is what people get weirded out about sometimes. It doesn’t bother me though. I have gotten used to people being that way and it’s okay. The truth is I am an intuitive. That means I have extra senses that allow me to read things about people like their past lives (yes, I believe in reincarnation) and spirits that might be hanging around them. I have been an intuitive since I was born. All of the women in my family are intuitives as well, going back a few hundred years in our genealogy. My house is haunted as well. I live in an area that burned in a great fire in 1917 and there were Civil War soldiers killed here in the 1860s too, so my entire neighborhood talks about our spirits. I have some regular spirits that have followed me on and off since I was born. Some of them are famous. Some of them are not. I work at home doing different types of readings for people to supplement my income. To read about that, go to this page. The most important thing to remember is I don’t care if you believe in these things or not. Disbelief is not going to make me hate you. Some of my friends are not believers and it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes I do talk about reincarnation and spirits but you don’t have to participate if you’re uncomfortable. I am not a Christian. I am a Wiccan. As long as you don’t force Jesus on me, I won’t force the goddess on you, and we’re cool! Read about my reincarnation case as Fanny Chamberlain and Lady Amy Robsart Dudley by clicking on their names.

There you have it. Now you know me a little better. Visit my website at www.jessicajewettonline.com if you feel so inclined. My other blog is http://fannysparlor.blogspot.com and that is where I teach everything about living in the nineteenth century.

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