For Art’s Sake - Exposed

I was an art school model!



She’s been immortalized in paintings, sculptures and drawings thousands of times, but you probably don’t know her name.

Even the artists who sketch her may not remember it, though they have contemplated every line and mark of her flesh for hours on end.

Jacquelyn Howard is a professional muse, paid a flat rate to inspire.

And for the past 12 years, Howard has been one of Atlanta’s most popular artist models at the Atlanta College of Art where she is paid $15 an hour to alert art students to the complexity and nuances of the human form.

The most difficult aspect of the work, she says, is holding a pose. There are other on-the-job perils as well. Though she believes most artists respect the work she does, randy male models give her the most trouble. “I’ve had more confrontations sitting next to a male model and them being there because they’re an exhibitionist,” she notes. Then there is the occasional hypercritical female artist, whose own body issues may be aggravated by Howard’s serene nude presence, like the one who objected to Howard’s unshaved underarms.

Howard has modeled at other venues in Atlanta like the Creative Circus and Agnes Scott College, which pay their models more. But she keeps coming back to ACA, she says, “because I love the energy there and I love the professors.”

Howard seems born to the work she does. The 37-year-old has an ethereal, earth mother composure that undoubtedly serves her well as she sits or stands for hours on end. Defying the modern trend toward over-inflated blondes, Howard is a classic beauty, with a rosy, wholesomely freckled complexion, serene blue eyes and a swath of long sandy hair.

Painting instructor Katherine Taylor attests to the particular gifts that Howard brings to art school modeling. “She is petite and quite beautiful, but more than that, students respond to her quiet, lyrical presence. She projects a genuine, comfortable appeal that sets the tone in the classroom.”

Artist models are assumed to be vacuous, devoid of agency. Painting a model can be an act of ownership and control. (See Girl With a Pearl Earring.) But Howard suggests that sitting for portraits can be more of a two-way street, an exchange between sitter and artist that is illuminating for both of them.

Howard takes her modeling seriously and hopes to inspire artists not by her physical being alone, but in the image she projects of a confident woman at ease with her body, who has continued to model through two pregnancies.

“Last year at ACA, my littlest girl was able to come with me in the morning sessions, and I thought it was really wonderful to show her the process and be raising her in the knowledge that the human body is a beautiful thing and it’s not just about being represented as sex; that it’s respected.”

Howard is philosophical about the work she does, seeing within it the potential to connect to the art-making experience and also change the attitudes of the still impressionable art students, especially the young men, in how they look at women.

“If they had any of that sexual feeling of having a woman onstage and I’m up there with my baby, that cuts it. Overall it’s just been a really beautiful scenario working with the students and developing relationships.”

Mayor Shirley Franklin has told the arts community she will make a decision about the Percent For Art issue by November. Some members of the arts community have pressed Franklin to honor the ignored ordinance that sets aside 1.5 percent of money spent on municipal capital construction projects for public art. In the meantime, the Public Art Advocacy Council has worked out an 11-point strategy aimed at bringing the issue to public attention in methods ranging from the rational to the zany. One of the most promising ideas is the creation of yard signs artsy types can plant in their Zoysia to draw attention to the issue, or just simply confound their neighbors.

Look more

- There’s still time to check out the group of emerging artists in Momus Gallery’s Remember My Name, including appealing work by Atlanta artist Lily Smernou, whose old-fashioned photo-based prints have the flavor of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s photomontages. It’s up through Aug. 13. Downstairs at Tula Arts Center in the Atlanta Photography Group’s space through Sept. 10 look for two smarty-pants photographs by Tom Meiss that come embossed with a notary’s stamp and other testaments of authenticity in an amusing nod to the notion of a photo as “proof.”

- The westward expansion continues. Sandler Hudson Gallery joins the great migration of galleries to the western corridor of the city and presents its first show this fall in its new digs next door to Octane coffee on Marietta Street. Barbara Archer Gallery is also moving to a new Inman Park location in the Elizabeth Street complex housing Johnny’s Pizza.

Felicia.feaster@creativeloafing.com