Meet Jaime Wing

We recently connected with Jaime Wing and have shared our conversation below.

Jaime, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

This is an excellent question, and interesting to think about, because my confidence and self-esteem are constantly developing and evolving. When I first started out, I did not have very much confidence in myself or my work at all. You just have to start by putting your work out there, and don’t be afraid of failure. In fact, expect to fail! The road to success is paved in many small failures! Go ahead and send in that application, try that market, make that post. Each time something doesn’t pan out, it’s a stepping stone to your next opportunity.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am an artist and a craftsman – I like to use the hybrid term “artist printmaker”, because the craft and creative are incredibly intertwined for me. The tactile, hands-on work of analog printmaking directly informs my artistic practice, and vice versa. When I have an idea, when I want to respond to an artistic prompt or meet a conceptual challenge, I like to start with what I can create with my own two hands. While craft is crucial to my practice, I am not so much interested in printing images or ideas that aren’t my own. While designing, I let my intuition guide me until I am satisfied with what I’m seeing. I get to have a direct conversation with my audience this way.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I would say, when you are first starting out, try lots of different mediums. Fiber art, printmaking, painting, metalsmithing, woodworking, digital art, ceramics. You never know how a craft skill could help you realize a concept in the future, and usually it’s in a way you didn’t expect! If something remotely interests you, take a workshop. Learn the traditional way of doing something, and then when you get comfortable with the foundations, you can start breaking the rules (safely and respectfully… always respect shared equipment!).

Second of all, find mentors in your field and talk to them about how they got to where they are. You will find that a lot of established artists and craftspeople will speak generously about their journey. Listen carefully, and keep observing.

Finally, don’t stop creating! Keep making things, even if you only have time to sketch once in a while. The momentum can start to die down if you let “life” get in the way of your creative practice, and it can be really hard to build it back up. What you make doesn’t have to be good – it’s more important that you’re making things at all. Over time, you’ll see incremental progress!

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

Something that really inspires me and drives my creativity is community and conversation. I absolutely love collaborating with other artists, whether it’s a publication like an anthology or zine, or working on a part of one big piece together. As long as the guidelines are clearly set and I have total creative freedom within those guidelines, I am quite interested in collaborating on a project! Let’s talk about it – DM me on Instagram or shoot me an email!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wingedprints.com
• Instagram: @wingedprints

Image Credits

Jaime Wing