Hello!

It is morning here in southern New Mexico. Our yard is FULL of the joyful songs of migratory birds. It is extra wonderful waking up early this time of year. A few mornings ago my Merlin bird-ID app recorded 12 different species of birds including some of my treasured favorites, the Phainopepla, Bullock's Oriole, Mocking Bird, Grackle and Curve Billed Trasher. (Along with the usual suspects, finches, sparrows, chickadees and three different species of dove) What Singers!

But that is not why I am writing. I would like to share a little bit about the most personal project I have ever created and let you know that it is now available to view (and shop) online, not just in person at Truth or Consequences Contemporary.

'What Hands Do' is a body of work that I have been working on for the past year. It is a deeply personal journey brought to life through watercolor paintings, printmaking and pit-fired ceramic sculpture.

I started painting for the first time, with watercolors, last spring-summer. Most of the 150+ watercolor paintings that I created over the summer of 2025 I labored over the winter to bind into two handmade books with wooden covers, sewn in a Coptic style binding. I do believe that the hand-bound book 'Vessels' is surely one of my favorite things I have ever created.

Last summer I also scratched 17 intaglio plates of plants, from life, from places that I hold dear. These intaglio prints are studies of plants from northern New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming that I worked on printing over the winter and spring '25-26. One set of these prints was also bound into a large format book entitled ‘What are The Colors of the Place You Love Most in This World.’ A handful of these intaglio prints I adorned with watercolors, and some with foil-stamped text.

The 17th plate in the series of botanical intaglio prints

There is also a sculpture component to this installation - 'An Offering'. Ceramics was my first love. Pit-firing clay pieces was something that I did for the first time in high school and studied more deeply in college. With great joy, in the last year I have been drawn back into this form of creating. This installation is a meditation on deep time, lineage and loss. The installation includes an assembly of ceramic pieces, some functional, some purely sculptural, along with a collection of 15 glass marbles that I commissioned Joshua Cravens to make with my Dad's ashes.

All of these works come together in a study of what it means to be a floating body in this world, to be both deeply connected to and completely severed from our past. It is a meditation on new connections to understand one's body through the act of creating and connecting to the non-human world.

Please, check out my website to view all of the facets of this project. I feel like I have so much more to say about it, and I want to add more photos here, but it is more than you want to read in an email.

The show 'What Hands Do', on view at Truth or Consequences Contemporary

And if you feel called to support, my work is available here, paintings, prints and a few fiber creations (which I just put on super-sale because I don't want to store them over the summer).

Pieces of the ceramic installation are available, prices by request.

a watercolor painting of a hand, holding a crescent moon on the tip of a pointer finger with a patch of black stary sky covering the upper quarter of the painting
A watercolor painting from the one-of-a-kind hand bound book Vessels, by Jeannie Ortiz
a close up image of a ceramic and glass art installation, the clay is shiny with mica and black from the firing.
A close up image of 'What hands do, an Offering'

I thank you all for your time, I know time is precious,
and for your support.
Wishing you all the best,
Jeannie

Quiet. Calm. A watercolor painting.