“Art was my calling; I feel best when I’m making it,” says J. Alice Sipple, a yoga instructor, art teacher, artist, and environmental justice advocate exhibiting at this year’s Open Studios. When she was little, Sipple says she “always had a craft going.”
One of these crafts was "Pysanky," the art of making a Ukrainian Easter egg. To decorate these eggs, you need a device called a kistka - a funnel shaped reservoir attached to a stylus that allows you to decorate an egg with various types of dyed beeswax. Sipple loved that it was a permanent design, as the egg yolk would harden and turn into a rattle after the process was complete.
When she attended college, she originally was not going for art; however, when she could not stop talking about her love for watercolors, she applied to art school and eventually received her Master’s in Art Education. Her work focuses on the beauty and fragility of nature, using techniques such as cyanotype printmaking and sumi-e ink to incorporate water into all of her work. To enter her artistic space, she will start with some drawing warmups in her sketchbooks; you can view some of her sketches from her time in Switzerland from 2001-2003 here.
She became involved with Open Studios after she became a studio artist at the ACA. In her studio space, delicate cyanotypes and striking portraits of her children decorate the walls. You can find her work at Arlington Open Studios on the fourth floor of the ACA, November 12th, 2022.