Category: General

New work at Cleveland Photo Fest!

Jackie Mantey

Cleveland Photo Fest presents Through the Lens: A Portrait Show, a curated group exhibition celebrating the art of portraiture and the stories behind the faces.

The show opens this Saturday, April 5, from 6:30 to 9:00 PM at the Brownhoist Gallery and runs through May 1, offering plenty of time to come experience the rich collection of human moments captured by photographers from across the region and beyond… including yours truly.

I love witnessing people in their element — doing things that make them happy. We look most like ourselves when we’re doing something we love, and I want to capture that, whether through words or photos.

I took this picture on my family’s farm during a recent summer visit. My dad had worked as a dairy farmer since he was a teenager.

Retirement was not easy for him. He liked to work, and he missed the challenge and joy of working with animals every day. Raising “the bunnies” became his way of slowly getting used to the idea of life after labor.

The day I took this photo, he was telling me about each rabbit, taking them out of their pens and showing them to me one by one.

I think this little guy was named Tubby.

Come for the art, stay for the stories. See you there!

Pretty in purple

Jackie Mantey

Come home soon.

// || // || // || // || // || // ||

“Under the Lilacs” by Jackie Mantey // Original image info: Russell Lee, 1941, “Old brown stonehouses, Chicago.”

  • Embroidery floss on photo paper
  • Comes in white picture mat with bevel-cut core
  • 11 inches x 14 inches in mat
SEE IN SHOP

New watercolor works!

Jackie Mantey

One watercolor painting = two cool new things 💧💧

BLUEBERRY FLAMINGO

Comforter
Notebook

APRICOT HONEY

Notebook
Comforter

CHARCOAL FOG

Notebook
Comforter

GRAPE SODA

Notebook
Comforter

PEONY ICE

Notebook
Comforter

CROCODILE PEACH

Notebook
Comforter

MINT SKY

Notebook
Comforter

MAGENTA RUST

Notebook
Comforter

BUBBLEGUM WINE

Notebook
Comforter

WISTERIA MINT

Notebook
Comforter

GREEN TEA PICNIC I & II

Notebook
Comforter
Notebook
Comforter

ROGUE BLUSH

Notebook
Comforter

ORCHID RAIN

Notebook
Comforter

PEACOCK SMOKE

Notebook
Comforter
SEE ALL COMFORTERS
SEE ALL NOTEBOOKS

May the flower crowns be with you

Jackie Mantey

This guy is from Augustus Sherman’s collection of Ellis Island portraits. The photo is dated 1906. He’s listed simply as “Romanian shepherd.” 

I looked up the May Day celebrations and rituals of Romania (nearly every country’s got some), and this apotropaic one charmed me:

“The entries to the animals’ shelters are adorned with green branches. All branches are left in place until the wheat harvest when they are used in the fire which will bake the first bread from the new wheat.”

To be clear, the fire is to bake the bread. 

Definitely only the bread. 

Definitely not the sad American co-ed’s bad boyfriend dressed in a bear suit. 

Midsommar’s ending explained by Screenrant

ONLY. THE. BREAD.

SEE IN SHOP

My 36th birthday was siiiiick

Jackie Mantey

I had food poisoning the day before my birthday, so I’m just now catching up on life and everyone’s super kind greetings from March 15, usually the best day ever (just ask this little party animal circa 1988).

THANK YOU! It was, shall we say, not a great day this year, BUT, I’m grateful for it all the same.

I think the rest of my 36th year is going to be awesome.

Here are a few reasons why:

  • At the beginning of the year I got accepted into StoryStudio Chicago’s Novel in a Year program. They only accept 12 writers per cohort AND I GOT IN. I have been too shy to apply for years, wary of my fledgling fiction-writing skills, but I finally got the courage last fall and am honored to now get to study under the author Abby Geni for 12 months. The program is giving me the final push I needed to finish this manuscript I’ve been tinkering away at for years. (It’s fiction about two people trying to save their hometown roller skating rink. That’s all I’ll say for now, but I love the story, the characters, and the rink.)
  • Justin and I are moving to a much bigger new place in the same Chicago neighborhood we’ve loved living in the past few years. It has enough room for us each to decorate our own space of the apartment (a divisive issue in our last spot, because Justin’s style is very 90s hip hop music video house meets minimalist chic and my style is very OMG DOLLY PARTON AT GRACELAND meets “never met a shag carpet or a cheetah print I didn’t like”). I’m turning the sunroom into my office and I can see Metra trains cruise by on the treeline and above the rooftops as the sun sets and, fuck dude, I die everytime I see it because it’s all I imagined a sunroom to offer. The best part is that a dear friend of mine found the spot for us randomly on Next Door and it feels like friend-fate/ the power of my home-is-inside-yourself approach to life coming to fruition IRL.
The minuscule overlap in the Venn diagram of our styles = a blue velvet couch.
  • My new-ish job is chaotic but overall great. Did I post about this last June? Anyway, I got a new fully remote, full time senior writing and content strategy position at a creative studio last June and I’m doing a lot of tech writing. It’s a fun challenge to flex a new writing muscle and learn about computer science and engineering on the clock. I still pinch myself that I get to make such a great, intellectually stimulating living through writing. Writing has paid my bills for the last 18 years. Eternally grateful for the natural talent and the hard-driving teachers who got me here.
  • Making lots of new art. Last year I started incorporating acrylic and watercolor paint into my practice, and I’ve been obsessed with making collage animations in PhotoShop recently.- Still crushing that auntie game! I love all the little babies! I feel like kids just need a lot of “Yes, and…” when they play and I am excellent at that. I get a lot of joy out of getting to know my nieces and nephews as they grow up. Such cool people my people made!
  • I finally learned how to make orange eyeshadow work on my dumb face!
  • It’s worth repeating ad nauseam: My narcolepsy diagnosis a few years ago was life-changing and the medicine I take now to fight my extreme fatigue has been life-giving.
  • Six years sober in April, baby. My second birthday, as my anonymous friends like to say. 😉 Fingers crossed I won’t be sick for that one this year too. ❤

Introducing the Peekaboo Collection

Jackie Mantey

The journals your mother warned you about!

  • Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a mixed media collage
  • Metal wire-o binding
  • Soft-touch coating cover
  • 5 inches x 8.5 inches, 140 dotted pages
  • Sourced from the U.S.
  • $20
  • Sexy and cuuuuuute

Hair

Sweet dreams.

Swingers

That’s kid stuff.

Newlyweds

Gimme a ring.

Fur

A perfect angel.

Cat Lady

Meow!

Sisters

It’s only natural.

Legs

Squats! Squats! Squats! Squats! Squats! Squats!

Bedtime

Saved you a spot.

Mirror

Who’s the smartest of them all?
TAKE A PEEK

Introducing the Rosa Collection

Jackie Mantey

The Rosa Collection is a series of spiral-bound notebooks with printed front and back cover collage designs I made, inspired by the 1799 botanical etchings of Mary Lawrance.

  • Metal wire-o binding
  • Soft-touch coating cover
  • 5 inches x 8.5 inches, 140 dotted pages
  • Sourced from the U.S.
  • $20 (shipping cost and sales tax included in price)

These soft-touch cover notebooks are hard to resist.

Shop the collection

Pink + Tangerine

Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “Rosa Damascena.”

Orange + Goldenrod

Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “Rosa Lutea-Bicolor.”

Burgundy + Blush

Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “Rosa Centifolia.”

  • An aerial view of waves crashing against a shore.

White + Blue

Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “White Provincialis.”

Yellow + Mint

Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “Rosa Sulphuria.”

Shop the collection

Gallery opening: Christmas Show at The Latent Space

Jackie Mantey

Tonight is the opening of the Christmas Show at The Latent Space Gallery in Irving Park!

The show will have more than 50 unique art objects for sale under the gallery’s Christmas tree. Two of my original embroidery artworks and a gift pack of my collage notebooks will be wrapped up all pretty under there. 🙂

The gifts will have the name of the artist who made the work on them (so guests can have an idea of what they may be purchasing) but the contents of the gifts will be a surprise.

Every gift is $300 or less and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to Brave Space Alliance in Chicago. 

Come in and buy a gift of artwork, hang out, and enjoy baked goods from Gingham Baking and eggnog. What a Saturday! There’s word Santa might even show up…

The gallery will be open Sunday as well so you can still hit up the tree if you can’t make it Saturday. They’ll have items available on the online shop soon too. 

Yay, art! Yay, gifts! Yay, art gifts!

Learn more about the show

Gallery opening: Journey / Explore at Fulton Street Collective

Jackie Mantey

Chicago friends, come see two of my newest pieces in person, plus work from these awesome other artists!

The Fulton Street Collective group show Journey / Explore opens this Friday, December 10, from 7-10 pm. ⁠

The address is 1821 W. Hubbard St. (on Hubbard between Wolcott and Wood, and NOT on Kinzie… that’ll send you to the alley, and that’s not where the show will be though perhaps that’s a cool idea for next time??)⁠

Tickets are $5 and there’s a capacity limit (because 😷), so snag yours now!

Attend opening night, you fancy boo