Jodi Reeb
Jodi Reeb lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has been a full-time artist and teacher for over 23 years. She has taught printmaking, acrylic and encaustic painting as well as book arts. Her artwork has been shown nationally receive numerous awards and is in many private and corporate collections including Wells Fargo Mortgage, Target Corporation, UnitedHealthCare Group and the Hilton Hotel among others. She is the recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board Grant in 2018. She received a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, MCAD, where she instructed printmaking for over 9 years. Jodi is a CORE instructor for R&F Handmade Paints teaching monthly workshops in her studio as well as nationally. She also teaches acrylic painting workshops and is a GOLDEN Acrylic Paints Artist Educator. Jodi creates her mixed-media paintings and sculptures in her studio at Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art where she has been a co-op member for 15 years in Minneapolis.
Reeb’s work, which is also available from her website jodireeb.com are mixed-media paintings that she says “were inspired by using photographs she took of pollinator-friendly plants at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, ‘from the bee’s perspective’”. The paintings are created with Encaustic paint and photographic collages as an intersection of nature and human activity. “I developed this new body of work after researching how to support the pollinator/bee species in Minnesota after being awarded the Artist’s Initiative Grant funded through the Legacy Fund administered by the Minnesota State Arts Board in 2018.”
“This is a new direction for me combining encaustic painting to produce mixed-media works that have the luminosity of beeswax while maintaining the graphic nature of photography. It was natural to partner with the Arboretum as a sanctuary for bees with several hives, acres of diverse pollinator habitat and an outreach education program partnered with the University of Minnesota. Encaustic is an ancient medium using molten beeswax, damar resin and pigment.”
“Working with beeswax as my primary painting medium has me very concerned about the recent decline of the pollinator population. Modern encaustic is primarily composed of 85% natural wax, produced by honeybees. There are over 400 species of native bees in Minnesota and pollinators are declining at alarming rates due to lack of habitat and pesticide use.”
This series of paintings is a way to celebrate our region’s unique pollinator diversity and our individual and collective responsibility to ensure that future generations get to experience fields of wildflowers abuzz with pollinators.
