{"id":40740,"date":"2019-01-02T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/adorable-art-started-to-make-fears-manageable\/"},"modified":"2019-01-03T08:30:34","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T17:30:34","slug":"adorable-art-started-to-make-fears-manageable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/home2\/adorable-art-started-to-make-fears-manageable\/","title":{"rendered":"Adorable art started to make fears manageable"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is already shaping up to be a monster year for Glo Ramirez.<\/p>\n

Ramirez, a Juneau artist who’s known for cuddly and playful creature designs you may have seen on postcards at Alaska Robotics Gallery<\/a>, is anticipating at least two showings of her work in 2019.<\/p>\n

“It was a great year, and I’m looking forward to the next one,” Ramirez said. “I didn’t think I’d have any shows in 2019.”<\/p>\n

“I’ve been trying to be more organized on the business part,” she added. “I can do the art, but honestly the business part has been quite tricky.”<\/p>\n

Ramirez said she doesn’t have a theme picked out for the shows — she also works in ceramics and creates abstract works — but her signature-style monsters will be featured.<\/p>\n

[Shoveling leads to snow art]<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n

“They’re awesomely cute like a bunch of ninja kittens,” Ramirez said. “It’s basically my tagline.”<\/p>\n

She’s also the scenic designer for Perseverance Theatre’s Young Company production of “Disco Alice: The Wonderland Remix.”<\/p>\n

Ramirez said making a set with era-appropriate flourishes for “Alice,” which opens in March, has been a departure from her usual work.<\/p>\n

“It has been quite a journey,” Ramirez said. “I am not from the ’70s, so I have to listen to a lot of music and get into the groove of the whole situation. It’s going to be the whole Black Box, so it should be like a full immersion.”<\/p>\n

Fun-sized scares<\/strong><\/p>\n

The blank-eyed, fuzzy creatures Ramirez creates tend to elicit the same response as Jim Henson’s most child-pleasing Muppets.<\/p>\n

They’re technically monsters, but they’re far from ferocious.<\/p>\n

“I like her work, it’s sort of whimsical and funny, and it makes me smile, which I sort of appreciate in art,” Inari Kylanen, store manager for Alaska Robotics Gallery.<\/p>\n

However, the work has its roots in feelings of frustration, sleep deprivation, anxieties and fear.<\/p>\n

“I started with that because I couldn’t sleep,” Ramirez said. “It started that way, just trying to let go of those fears and putting it on paper.”<\/p>\n

The monsters also owe their existence to Ramirez, who is originally from Puerto Rico, relocating to Juneau almost three years ago.<\/p>\n

“It started when I actually decided to stay in Alaska,” Ramirez said. “It was the summer, and I went to visit some friends, and then it was a beautiful, beautiful summer. It trapped me.”<\/p>\n

While she was enchanted enough to stay, the long daylight hours were less than ideal for Ramirez’s sleep cycle.<\/p>\n

That bled into her artwork, and Ramirez drew a sleepy monster she dubbed Nix the Monster, Mother of the Night. She sports moose antlers and a constellation body inspired by the Alaska night sky and state flag.<\/p>\n

Other fuzzy, masked anxieties soon followed. Visualizing worries as tiny, adorable creatures has a way of making them manageable.<\/p>\n

“They’re cute and they’re cuddly and nice, and they’re a way of saying if my fears or this small I can hang out with them,” Ramirez said. “They have masks because you never know what’s going on behind a mask.”<\/p>\n

[Ramirez shows kids how to make monsters<\/a>] <\/ins><\/p>\n

Lifelong interest in art<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Ramirez has only been drawing her monsters for the past few years, her interest in art goes back much further.<\/p>\n

She couldn’t paint on the walls, but Ramirez said her parents would hang up large sheets of paper that she could decorate.<\/p>\n

“My parents were very supportive, just giving me art supplies all the time,” Ramirez said.<\/p>\n

Despite the support, Ramirez had the idea that art was not a viable career deeply entrenched in her head.<\/p>\n

“I tried to study other stuff, like computer programming,” Ramirez said. “One thing I kept repeating is, ‘Oh, if I have time to start drawing again.’”<\/p>\n

Eight years ago, while still in Puerto Rico, she lost her job, and suddenly, she did have that time.<\/p>\n

Ramirez began working on her art and went to Puerto Rican comic conventions and developed her style.<\/p>\n

“In the beginning, even as an adult, I tried a lot of being inspired by other people’s art, but I think the great part of those little monsters, what I’ve been doing now is they’re easy to find a personality with them,” Ramirez said.<\/p>\n

\n

\u2022 Contact arts and culture reporter Ben Hohenstatt at (907)523-2243 or bhohenstatt@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n

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