She teaches art to anyone 5 years old and older at her summer animal art camp.
Blue Plume Studio offers art and animal adventures to bring out the creative side of people and, in many cases, to help them heal from trauma such as domestic violence. She teaches art to anyone 5 years old and older at her summer animal art camp.
Blue Plume Studio will offer the art and animals classes after school in the fall, as well. Classes will be available during the day for those who are homeschooled. She also offers field trips and birthday parties for kids. Her classes teach how to make paintings of Arizona animals.
All of her adopted animals are feral, including Sweet Pea, a wild Mustang, and Cedar, a wolf dog, who she saved from a puppy mill. Her sheep, Johnny Cash, likes to headbutt people if given the chance, and Prairie Belle is a llama. Another dog, two cats, a macaw and several chickens round out the lineup.
Harlow has been combining her love for art and animals since she could walk, and started teaching others when she was 6 years old.
Her business began to take shape when Harlow, who is Cherokee and Choctaw, took a nap and had a vision dream about providing a safe haven for kids and adults. That’s when she came up with the idea of art and animals.
“I wanted to give people that front porch feel where adults could get tea and kids could get pop,” she said. “I’ve always been passionate about the animals. I started with just the art. I had rescued some animals and the kids wanted to see them.”
Meeting Sweet Pea was memorable, as the mustang was only three days out of the wild. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had put the wild horses up for sale. A dog came running out by the horses, Harlow bent down to pet it, and that is when Sweet Pea put its head on Harlow’s shoulder. Her heart melted.
Harlow is a domestic violence survivor. Through Yavapai Advocacy Family Center, she connected with others who had experienced domestic violence. “We get together for a paint night,” she said.
Harlow is trained in many art forms, but she specializes in acrylic speed painting. Her paintings are completed in two hours. When she teaches, it depends on the speed that the student wants to go.
Harlow’s Blue Plume Studio has three focus areas. The first is her classes. The second is performance art, as she often paints at events. The third is commissioned art, in which someone pays her to create a piece.
In sixth grade, Harlow started painting professionally. By seventh grade, she was creating murals. In ninth grade, she won a mural competition that was open to 400 high schools. At age 15, she started a mural business and that was her side job until she was 21. Her murals appeared in neighborhoods, nightclubs and baby rooms.
Harlow earned her Bachelor of Art degree from Azusa Pacific University near Pasadena. After that, Harlow taught at an orphanage in South Africa for two months. She was able to bring the art pieces back for a gallery show in Los Angeles to raise money for the orphanage. She is especially proud because when she got there, the children were only able to have one meal a day, but with the money they raised, the children were able to have more food. While this occurred almost 20 years ago, she continues to stay in touch with them.
Harlow first started Blue Plume Studio in Oregon 15 years ago. She moved herself and her studio to Chino Valley recently to be closer to her parents. “I want to bring people to their creative haven,” she said. QCBN
By Stan Bindell, QCBN
For more information, call 253-905-2842 or email blueplumestudio@gmail.com.
Photo by Stan Bindell: Jenny Rose Harlow combines her love for art and animals at her Chino Valley studio.
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