Artist Sam Jowers

When I first found out about the plastic "island" in the Pacific ocean, I was in shock.  I just had no idea how there could be so much plastic in the ocean!  Of course it is loosely bound together so when animals try to rest on top of it, they get caught between the debris.  This is especially dangerous for mammals who need to come up for air.  My mermaid found out the hard way that this island just cant be trusted.

For about a week, the words "my grace is sufficient" kept rattling around in my head.  I couldn't get it out.  I realized that all my worry and my troubles, my trials, all of it will always be there, but because of God's grace, I can walk thru it.  It gives me peace of mind and heart.  I don't see them as troubles anymore but as opportunities to walk with God and be in communion with Him while it all gets sorted out.  I feel at peace and I feel capable. And I realize that it may not go MY way! ps, anytime you see doilies in my work, it represents God's grace.

I wasn't going to blog this page because not only have you already seen this print, but this page is deeply personal and exposing of my feelings.  I felt I needed to put an end cap to this image.  I made this page a few months ago to put into words what I felt at the time of my house fire.  It took me a long time to actually feel anything at all and to put it into words just couldn't be done until recently.  On a lighter note, it is the turning point in the story of the mermaids.  We humans have been "dumping" stuff into the seas for as long as we have been moving across the surface.  It has always seemed like a very deep hole that could take any abuse because we just couldn't see where it all ended up.  There is actually a LOT of stuff on the ocean floor and it is growing exponentially!  Never mind how you feel about the concept of global warming, our oceans are just plain dirty!  We never know when we can go to the beach because of bacte...

This is one of those rare times when there is already something in the book that you really want to keep in the book.  The title of this chapter was "is she for real?!"  I planned and saved this space just so I could use the title in one of my pages.  Humans have been looking for mermaids since the discovery in San Francisco and look what we have!  A Mermaid!  ...but...Wait!  is she for real?  I don't know where the octopus got the parts but he's made himself some bait for his next dinner.  Maybe its bits and pieces of his last meal.  Someone better notice the stitching down her side and the watery "hey boys!" isn't coming from her!!  I love this page!!!

Here is another transparent page.  I found this great cover on the local magazine in Galveston.  I took about 5 copies of it!!!  Who ever painted her did a wonderful job and the magazine didn't mess it up with a lot of writing!  This page is about a wonderful hobby called "Letterboxing".  I have been letterboxing since bout 2009.  I came across it when reading one of my partner's profiles on swap-bot.com.  (I know...I love that site!  you meet some really interesting people!!)  I looked it up and found two other sites that were wonderful called Atlasquest.com and letterboxing.org.  the better site is Atlasquest because it is really maintained well.  I haven't met a "boxer" yet who was creepy or dangerous, but still be careful doing things online.  The concept is amazing.  You go to the site, find a letterox in your area.  follow the clues and more often than not, you will find a box.  (I know quite a few...

I have already talked about the passing of my mentor, Donna Rae Harris.  I had the great privilege of knowing her even in my adult life.  She was my high school teacher.  I pretty much do in my class what she taught me in her class.  She made herself a bridge for the young artist in her classes to become adult artist after they graduated.  Every time I went to her home to visit, there were students who still visited her from the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's!  She loved us all and we loved her back.  We are her legacy.  I am grateful to her family for letting me be there at her passing.  She was in and out while I got to sit with her.  The last time she woke up while I was there, she was sort of surprised and said "thank you for being here...Next time, I'll do something for you!"  I laughed and told her that she already had done something for me and that was why I was sitting there.  She was 92 years old and still doing art!...

This page was painted on the left and inspired by the "Prince Valiant" comic strip from the newspaper on the right.  I remember loving to read about prince valiant as a child.  Its strange because he never aged like I did! lol  Prince Valiant is always out on adventure while his queen sits at home and pines for him.  Not this mermaid!  it turns out, that she has to save him!!  The comic page featured a rushing river, but I turned it into the edge of the sea so that the mermaids would actually be there waiting for any stray opportunity to grab some loot.  I am very pleased with how this page transitioned!  Girl empowerment! 

One of the books that our librarian threw out was about William Shakespeare.  He actually hung out at a bar called "the mermaid".  He would listen in on conversations and write about what he heard.  I'm sure it was a pretty bawdy place to hang out and the writing on the bathroom walls probably left a lot to be desired.  I found some great mermaid art in the book and decided to write my own sayings on the walls of the bathroom!  You will notice that there is a shoe charm hanging off the page.  What a useless object for a mermaid to own!

Even lovers Drown by author unknown to me A Mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him for her own. Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down,  forgot in cruel happiness that... even lovers drown. I found this poem on the internet and loved it so much I wanted to illustrate it.  I used packing tape to make the see thru page.  It is a transfer technique I teach my kids to do in painting 2.

While on a road trip with my mother last year, we stopped into a gas station restroom.  They had the most beautiful white linen like paper towels in their dispenser that I put one in my purse to paint on later.  It was like painting on canvas!  I covered the book pages with the whole sheet of paper towel and then painted on it like I had stretched canvas on the surface.  It really made a nice creamy surface.  I also attached a pocket I found in a library book that was being thrown away.  I love how librarians over time have dialed the date on those little date stamps and meticulously recorded every time a student borrowed a book from the library.  The pocket dates go back to October 1966 (a little over a year after I was born) and the card goes back to February 1984!  (about four months before I graduated from high school!!!)  So many hands have touched those two pieces of paper! I use the tags to hold mermaid stamps that happen to "sw...

Keep calm and swim on!!  I'm sure mermaids are a lot like the rest of us.  We go thru life thinking no one notices that we even exist.  But the proof is there and when you see the proof, its a little scary!  Humans have been voyeurs to the lives of mermaids for hundreds of years.  Just go thru your grocery store or coffee shop!  Sardine and tuna cans are not the only places to find mermaids selling wares for humans.  Soaps, Travel, lottery cards,...Sex, images of mermaids can be found everywhere!  I love to take road trips to find mermaids.  I look for statues, murals, anything where someone has taken the time to create a mermaid image.  you would be surprised how far away from the sea you can find a mermaid statue!!!  There are two fresh water mermaids, each with their own legend, near Austin and San Antonio Texas!  I even found one on a bathroom wall in Tyler Texas!  There is a Danish man who has a website called Merm...

I can imagine that a tribe of mermaids is a lot like a girls sorority house.  Party all night, sleep all day until someone realizes that there is nothing left to wear and the RA is banging on the door telling you it smells like fish and you better get it cleaned up!  Girls just wanna have fun!  I used the umbrellas from the drink picks in my background along with a Starbucks cookie envelope.  There are also bits of gum wrapper to bring some "bling" to the edges.  In the foreground are some real jewelry pieces and some other findings.  I love the pinks in this page. And I love the mermaid book mark that also works with the cover.  she is positioned to look like she is rising from the waves of ribbon at the top of the page.

I have often wondered how closely mermaid lives would mirror our own human lives. After all, they are half human!  Every time I come home from the beach, I always have sand in my swim suite.  I can imagine the same happens with a mermaid's clam bra!  Only she would have sand from all over the world as she travels around from beach to beach.  In my bio on swap-bot.com, I let it be known that I collect sand from beaches around the world.  every now and then, there will be a baggie of sand from my swap partner.  It is usually from their vacation or even from their home town.  I always send them some from Galveston.  Ironically, even after having my sand for about four years, it still feels "wet" because each grain is still coated with oil from the BP Horizon spill in the Gulf.  You can t see it but I'm sure that is the reason for it. You will notice in the mermaid jars that each sand is a different color!  I even have volcanic sand f...

Atlantis has no boundaries.  This is true for both the oceans and mermaids.  There are fish in the sea that swim the globe in migration patterns all year long!  They literally own the planet!  They have the freedom to explore all of it's watery ways!  Mermaids have no boundaries either.  They are not controlled by human morals or values.  Their way of life actually comes in conflict with Humanity's approach.  (of course this is all conjecture!)  I think of them as being the emotional equivalent to a 9 year old happy little girl.  They share what they have and take what they want.  As long as they are playing well together, they live in tribes.  When they cant, they go off by themselves.  I found this quote; "Reasons to be a mermaid: Great Hair, Don't have to wear pants, Lure men to their deaths, Free Clam bra" on the Internet somewhere.  Such an odd juxtaposition of reasons and they sound totally equal to each oth...

Some days...it seems anything can be solved with a Beatles song! After the discovery of mermaids near San Francisco, the humans go on an all out search.  We invade the oceans... we pour into the seas from all over the world in search of these illusive sirens of the deep.  Of course, what better means of transportation when looking for "imaginary" creatures than a yellow submarine!  She is in plain sight but no one can see her!  I edged my page with some great duct tape!  The US Post office has great postage stamps!

Only now, with our modern surveillance abilities could we even hope to discover that mermaids are real.   And...what if we did?  How would we respond?  Like everything else we have discovered, we have trapped it, put it on display and studied it until there is nothing left to learn.  Being on Swap-bot.com, I get all kinds of stuff in the mail.  I got this photo of a mermaid show from the 40's or 50's.  The air tubes that helped the "mermaids" breathe under water reminded me of chains.  I wrote an article for the newspaper, created a crowd of onlookers and even provided two free tickets to see the show yourself!  You just have to pull them out of the ticket pouch!  I set the whole show in San Francisco California, which is already a freak show!  It just so happened that one of my swap partners sent me a letter and she lives in San Francisco! It has it on the cancelation and stamp.  Who knows if these mermaids will ever make it bac...

I always want my altered books to perform like a regular published book.  Every time I prep a book, I keep the front pages.  I keep the title page, the publisher's page and everything including the table of contents.  In this case, it appears that I skipped a page in order for my first entry into the book to be an "open spread" or two facing pages.  In my swapping and wandering about, I "find" items and images that speak to me.  They don't lend themselves to being added to a page in the "story", but they are significant enough to save and be displayed in the beginning pages.  I also use the actual table of contents to list the titles of my own pages.  I will cross out words and titles or if the title works with the page I make, I will incorporate it into the list.  I cut out typed titles that I create on a word doc.  I will also create small pieces of art to fit onto pages that just need a little something to get you to the n...

It is with some trepidation that I show you my latest altered book.  This is one of three that I have been working on for the past two years.  They don't happen in an instant.  You have to find imagery and ideas as they unfold.  There is a whole lot of honesty and just a little truth in this book.  Let me say that I have never believed that mermaids are real.  I love the idea of mermaids because they represent innocence and pure humanity.  They represent nature and man.  Sometimes the flow of this book will make sense and sometimes it won't.  At first, I thought doing a mermaid book would end up being a little "corny".  I am really happy with the direction that it went.  I never intended the book's title to be what the book was about but, for some reason, in all three instances, the title pushed itself to the surface of the pages and that is what influenced each of my three books.  In this case, the only altering of the cove...

Obviously, after carving so many mermaid blocks, I now had a "collection" of mermaid prints.  I started looking on etsy.com to see if others were also making mermaid prints.  There they were!  One artist even made a mermaid print called "Mermaid on the Mississippi" and the mermaid was in the shape of the bend in Louisiana!  Very clever!  I couldn't let Our Houston Ship Channel go un-represented!  So, our mermaid represents our cowboy industrial spirit.  She was a fun one to do.  I'm especially proud of the bandana designs on her tail and bra.  I also love my two container ships.  There is nothing romantic about them at all! Just a little side note: The seagulls are there to remind me to throw the bread out further when riding the bolivar ferry.  I once got poop in my face feeding the gulls!

So one day, one of my students is looking at my prints and she says "Ms. Jowers, why don't you have any black mermaids!?"  I said, "I don't know! I never thought about it."  I then asked her to be still and I drew this beautiful mermaid from her face.  She really is in to bad boys!  Here you go! Thanks! Ebony!  She loved it!  So do I!  I love the boats in the background and her hair! gorgeous!  This print has everything going for it!  It is so hard to carve faces and hands.

Miah is my youngest niece.  She is so helpful, smart, gracious and also knows her own mind.  I carved this stamp for her.  She is helping a baby manatee get away from a boat propeller.  It is unfortunate there are only eight of these prints.  I was testing this block and then washed it so that I could print the rest later that day.  One of my students saw it on the counter and for what ever reason, picked up the carving tool and started carving across the surface of the design.  For the life of me, I will never understand her motivation.  She wasn't holding a grudge and actually liked me...I think it was just a self centeredness that made her not even care that she was destroying something someone else had made.  I don't even know if she knew it was mine.  I think she just wanted to try out the tool and see how the rubber block felt when you carve on it.  I was so pissed! and I could do nothing about it because I couldn't prove s...

This is definitely my best seller on Etsy.com.  I made this one for my nephew, Regan.  He does love the outdoors and according to him, he is quite the ladies man!  (Of course, I don't think junior high is a good qualifier to know!).  My favorite part of this one is the ship in the back ground.  I draw such girly figures all of the time that when it came to drawing this sailor, I was afraid to put too much "swing" in his hips.  I am pretty happy with this one! Not only has this mermaid caught her fill of fish, she has actually become the catch of the day!

So after making my other two nieces a print...it only seemed right that I make prints for all of my other nieces and nephew.  Taylor is the first born of my brother.  She is bright, self assured and so sarcastic!  lol.  Definitely a Jowers.

About six months after my first niece got married, her sister Jessica married her college sweet heart!  Those two!  They breath each other's air, and work so wonderfully together in every way.  No matter what life sends their way,  These two will be each other's safe harbor in the storm! I really enjoyed carving this one because of all of the "current" lines in the water.  Faces are always hard because if you slip...you might end up with out an eye or a nose.  Getting facial expressions is very tedious and nerve wracking!