JJ standing with one of his favorite large works

I dont keep track of how long I have been a member artist. It's been a couple of years. That's all I know. Someone told me about Creative Clay. I did art alot when I was a kid. I used to do all kinds of stuff. Sometimes I liked to draw.

I like being at Creative Clay. I like the freedom to do it myself and do my work by myself. I like hanging out with my friends here too.

I like to paint once in a while. I like to make my line drawings. I like to use the black paint the most. It's my favorite color. I like using my lines with sharpies the most because I get the best work. If you look at all my lines, that's the best. That is my favorite thing. I like to make my own stuff. I listen to my teachers, but I like to make it my own way. I paint too but I want to do it my way. I like it my way.

JJ showing off his collection of large colorful drawings

I don't like performing arts that much. I like mostly my lined drawings. That is my own stuff. I listen to music while I do my own art. I listen to music at the same time because I can close my eyes and not even think about the drawing. I just draw what I want to draw. That is how I do it. I do what I have to do. I keep my mind on my work mostly.

I like to do my stuff. That is all I have to do. I want to continue making my own stuff. I want to sell more. I sell the best I can. I have even more stuff to finish. When I get done with it, it gets hung in the gallery. I like seeing my own designs on the walls. It's nice. It's good. That makes me proud.

JJ poses in the Good Folk Gallery with one of his colorful Sharpie portraits

In five years, I still want to be making my lined drawings because I like it most of all.

I do what I have to do. I do faces or portraits a lot. I use them within the lines. It makes up all of my lines. I like to use color. I like different colors because I like different things. I make my own colors. I like coming up with my own stuff. You cannot see all the stuff I put in my drawings. Some of the stuff is hidden in my work. If you look, you can see eyes, but I see extra eyes everywhere. I have different layers that only I can see because I know what is in it.

I have a lot of art. I like all of them in different ways. I have some portraits at my house of my teachers and other students that I like.

My advice to artists is do the best you can do. Make the best of art you can do. If you are doing a painting, don't rush it. The painting I took my time with, a museum bought it. It was a huge yoda painting with money symbols. I took my time with it. If you rush, you mess up. I can get done fast if I want to, but I don't want to. I take my time and it turns out good. If you do the best you can and it turns out good, that is good. Just do the best you can. I try to.

JJ working on a painting in the studio

Joseph JJ H. Exhibits:
Original Greeting Cards FLCA Store
Sharpie Drawings GFG 2023-present
Paintings GFG 2023-present
Summertime GFG July-August 2024
The Good Folk Invitational GFG September-October 2024

JJ is from Ohio. JJ has been part of the Creative Clay Community Arts Program since 2004. JJ can be found in the studio, at work on his large drawings and paintings, in the gallery studying the newest exhibit, or, at his artist files reviewing his large collection of sharpie marker drawings. He is a prolific, accomplished and self-motivated artist whose work has been exhibited in private collections, local galleries, the Museum of Fine Arts Store, and in our own Good Folk Gallery.

JJ’s art is big and bold, in bright colors of sharpie marker or acrylic paint. He begins his process with black line work that emerges into pattern and design incorporating human and animal figures often in a seascape or landscape. He then adds his colors, all over and inside each shape, creating a vibrating stained glass effect. His work is powerful and joyful to explore.

JJ explains, “My ideas comes from me. I draw a lot and I paint a lot of people. I can draw a head, a tail and all different sea life, dragons and people. I draw a lot of different shapes and I put them together, all different shapes. And lines, horizontal, that look like stained glass.”

JJ's work can be seen in the Good Folk Gallery.

The Freedom To Do It Myself: By JJ Hitch