Artist enjoys working from 'scratch'

Jennifer Hartwig's artwork is on display in the Sisters Library through the rest of this month.

Hartwig got her start in scratch art while attending high school in Whittier, California. Then, as often happens to artists, priorities change, marriage and children come along and they lose the urge, if not the skills.

That's what happened to Jennifer; it wasn't until about seven years ago that she found her way back to her love of scratch art, and it was penguins that helped do it.

After a marriage that produced a son but ended in divorce, her journey back to art began with her first commission, in 2007. It was for a coworker: a piece with mom and dad penguins, and a toddler between them, that was hung in the nursery of her coworker's children. The word spread and she was tapped for more commissioned pieces.

Jennifer also had the great pleasure of donating a piece to the Canadian Cancer Society for auction, which generated additional requests for portraits of cherished pets, or favorite wildlife for family and friends, all of which are keeping her busier than a cat on a hot tin roof.

Penguins popped into Jennifer and her husband Kirk's lives before they were married. They decided to see how well they could get along by attending the Burning Man festival on the Black Rock Desert in Nevada - a gathering of around 40,000 people that made it temporarily the second-largest city in the state.

On a beautiful, clear full-moon night they decided to take a bike ride out on the desert, and suddenly discovered a larger-than-life statue of two penguins. That was surprise number one - but the next surprise was even better: Kirk proposed, and Jennifer accepted.

Scratchboard art is a form of direct etching, using a sharp, pointed tool to scratch out an image. Traditional scratchboard is a three-layer medium made up of smooth, white, kaolin clay (porcelain) on a pressboard surface, sprayed with a layer of thin, black ink.

Hartwig scratches through the layer of ink - often using the tip of a surgical scalpel to expose the white clay below - which produces a black and white image, and when light strikes the exposed porcelain it gives off an iridescent glow. The finished piece isn't something that happens instantly; some scratchboard artwork requires well over 100 hours of delicate work to be completed.

"If it's an animal I'm going to create on the scratchboard, I almost always start with the eyes," Jennifer says. "That's what people notice first. If I get the eyes right, all the rest will fall into place."