Today we’d like to introduce you to Jade Nitro.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
The home I came from was a very creative home. My father is a musician who writes his own songs and performs his music, my mother owns and operates her own business, and my little sister is a singer and a songwriter. It goes without saying that creativity and originality was not only accepted in my household, but encouraged. Anything that I wanted to do. I was encouraged to try it. The stipulation for that was, “if you want to do this, then you have to practice it every day.”
That being said, I always had some kind of notebook on me and I was not drawing every day. I wasn’t sure that pencil and paper was the medium for me. I would see these hyper realistic drawings and I would wonder why I couldn’t do that. On the other hand, I wasn’t really interested in putting the work in to do that. That made me think that maybe I just wasn’t supposed to be an artist. (Spoiler alert: that’s not true!)
I wound up taking a lot of art classes scattered throughout school, but I tried other things in the meantime. I spent a lot of time in choir for the school and with the Phoenix Girls’ Chorus, I would make videos, and I would write like it was my job. I would write poetry stories, journal entries- I was always writing. None of it exists anymore because I would cross hatch the writing meaning that I would write it horizontally on the lines and then I would continue writing vertically so that it wasn’t legible, even if I didn’t destroy it afterwards. Over years and years, I collected notebooks that did not get finished and would slowly dwindle in pages because I would keep ripping the pages out. I really don’t know why I would do this. I just didn’t want anyone to know what I was thinking, I guess. However, that’s not compatible with being a writer.
For a while, making videos and mostly keeping them to myself was my creative outlet. Sometimes I would show them to friends to make them laugh, but really it was just for fun. These could be videos of me lip syncing to songs or videos of me talking about music I like. I even made a 3-D model of a cartoon character once and made a video of it spinning. Videos were just a way to make something.
When I was in my senior year of high school, I figured I wanted another job so I applied to what I thought was a clothing store but upon my interview I learned that I had actually applied to a craft store. I went in. I did my interview. I did not tell the interviewer that I didn’t mean to apply to her store and I got my first retail job. This was a huge moment in my time as an artist. I didn’t even know this store existed.
A couple months later it was somebody’s birthday. I found something that I could do as a cheap and easy gift. I bought some canvases, tubes of paint with the primary colors, and I got to work. This was my first painting, an 18th birthday gift for my ex-boyfriend.
It was a pretty cool idea. I found a ton of symbols from all of his favorite video games and I made them intertwined. It was a successful gift but needless to say I do not have that anymore.
I do have my second painting, which was a lighthouse and my third which was a finger painting of a ton of flowers. I really loved painting so I kept going. I kept working at the craft store and I kept buying canvases. Eventually I went to college and transferred to the craft store up there. My first college purchase was more paint and more canvases. I would paint a lot up there, but I don’t know how much of my work is still with me. I would give a lot away to the people that I was meeting and the friends that I was making. If I didn’t like a piece and someone else did- it was theirs. I’m not even sure that I signed any of them.
One day I worked on a painting (which was particularly uninspired in hindsight) and my best friend who really is a prodigy artist told me that she didn’t like it. I love her for this honesty. It did also send me into a slump. I did not touch a paintbrush for a while after that. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t looking at art, but I was uninspired. That was my first rejection of my art and I needed it. The painting that she didn’t like was a red and orange sunset background with black silhouettes of islands on either side. It wasn’t well executed either. I gave it away as soon as someone else complimented it.
When I did start painting again, my work was significantly better. I needed that rejection to look at my art critically. At that point I was still doing it for fun. If I didn’t like a painting, I would put it aside and I collected a pretty heavy “Work in Progress” graveyard. I wasn’t trying to be an artist. I was in school to be a teacher. but that was the point where I switched my major to an art major.
Just so you’re with me at this point in time, winter break of my first year of college was over and it was January 2020. Long story short, three months later I would go home and never go back. This is when I just started painting and painting and painting. I was visibly getting better. I struggled with finding a style, but I was growing.
At this point, my life focus was still elsewhere. I was still trying to find work as a teacher for when I could further my education I was also still working at the craft store. My attention was divided. I didn’t really put my all into anything. This continued for a few years through different jobs. eventually, in the summer of 2023. I got pulled up for a panel at Phoenix Fan Fusion. There was a panel that was called “Quick Draw”, and the idea was that professional comic book artists would be there and they would take requests from the audience and draw as many as they could in their twenty minutes provided. There were supposed to be four artists but only one showed up. Out in the audience there were a couple artists, including myself, that came up to help this one artist get through the panel. I did five illustrations in the twenty minute slot. These were just silly things like Godzilla, holding a coffee mug and reading the newspaper or Garfield in an earthquake in a coffee pot- but to be at a panel at that big of an event lit that fire in me again. Not to mention, I had my partner who is my biggest cheerleader there raving about me to anybody that would listen.
I started to do commissions and share my art through my own art account on Instagram (@jadenitroart). My focus was now officially leaning towards art. My mother was helping me work on my website and get an online store and portfolio set up. I was looking into Phoenix‘s “First Fridays” with friends that I could potentially booth with. Then I picked up everything after living in Phoenix, Arizona for my entire life and I moved to Kalamazoo Michigan. My first couple of months in Kalamazoo, I felt like a bad organ transplant. I couldn’t find a job. I couldn’t find any friends. Eventually, I started to look on the internet for art events. I had heard that Kalamazoo had a good art scene, but I couldn’t find it.
I had gone downtown to see if there was a First Friday in February. There was nothing, the streets were dead. I went again in March and that was the first Art Hop of the year in 2024. I walked into Pop City Popcorn and spoke to the owner there about how to get my art into an Art Hop and I was lucky that I asked her! Her response was, “Show me what you got.” I showed her a painting that I had done; It was a giant painting, it had three chickens on it, bright colors, chicken footprints, and blue eggs. It is still one of my favorite pieces that I’ve ever done. She said, “Oh you paint chickens? I can work with that. Email me and we’ll talk about you being artist of the month next month.” and I was in!
I was so excited, but there was one problem. I had none of my paintings with me in Kalamazoo. I left all of them back home. I looked around the store and I counted how many paintings that this current artist had and he had eleven up on the walls and in the window. So I thought, “Okay, one month, eleven paintings, how hard can it be?” I got to work. From the First Friday of March to the First Friday of April, I painted eleven chickens and got them up in the store. Also within that month I got my website set up, I got my store set up, and I started my social media and filled it with all of my paintings so that there was a portfolio of some sort accessible to the public.
A few days after I put up my first art display ever, I got a follow on Instagram from an account called The Starlite Collective. I was so excited and a little confused. I’ve never been followed by someone I didn’t know before- so I deep dove into their account trying to figure out what they were. I found that they had an upcoming event and I could go see for myself.
Later, the next month, I went to their event and they recognized me! That was insane. Not only are people that I don’t know following me, but then they’re recognizing me in public? What do I even do with this? That’s when Val Birch handed me The Starlite Collective’s card and said, “Please apply to my event!” At that point, what do you do? You get in the car and you immediately apply to the event!
At the same time that this was happening, I had just taken my art down from Pop City as my month of April was over. I was walking down the street with a canvas that was as big as me in one hand and a bag of canvases that was half as big as me in the other hand. The person who used to own Youz Guys Dogz, the hot dog window in Kalamazoo, asked me where the chickens were going. I told him home and I didn’t find another place for next month yet and he invited me to do a live painting outside of his shop during the next Art Hop. I said yes and this prompted me to get a table and make a plan.
This is the first time that I really felt like I could do something with my art so I kept looking for more opportunities. Kalamazoo has an Arts Council, those are the people that host the Art Hops so it felt like I needed to do some research on them. I looked into their website and I found that there was a member meeting soon. I wasn’t sure what that meant but I signed up because I was gonna get some information out of it regardless. At that point I met the office coordinator of the Arts Council, Eric Oliphant, and he informed me that you have to be a member to show up to the members meeting, but offered me to meet with them for any questions that I would have. Things kept getting postponed, but in that process of rescheduling, Kim Shaw, the programs director of the art council was added to our meeting.
I had no idea what this meeting was gonna be. Was I just going to meet somebody? Was I performing? Was I showing them my work? I wanted to be prepared. I didn’t have a lot of time to make a portfolio. I got it printed out. I went and got a binder and sheet protectors from OfficeMax and I was running late so I was putting the pages of that portfolio into the binder as the cashier was helping me stuff the sheet protectors.
I’ve met a lot of good people in a really short amount of time and this propelled me to do so much so quickly. I also have a lot of support from my family and my partner who helps me with every event and fuels me with encouragement.
After that very quick series of events, all which happened within two or three months, I kept getting offers to come to events and I kept finding events that I wanted to be a part of. I still do not say no to any opportunity because I am so excited and grateful to be here.
Recently, I really got a chance to sit back and reflect because it’s been a year since I got my first show at Pop City Popcorn. In the past year, I’ve made over 40 paintings, I got my art into a store downtown, I built my social media presence from nothing, my style has developed significantly, I’ve made so many friends and found a community, and I’m still always trying new things. I have done two gallery events so far and I have one more currently booked. I don’t think that I am anywhere near the top of my art journey. I almost hope there isn’t a top. I found a lot of success and I am happy and grateful that I was able to accomplish this much in that amount of time- I am dually grateful to the community I built along the way.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The biggest struggle I had was believing that my art was good enough to share. As soon as I was able to believe in myself even a little, everything started to take off.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
The majority of my work is created using acrylic paint on stretched canvases and I am most commonly recognized for my bright colors, abstract backgrounds, and of course chickens.
I didn’t intend on being the chicken lady, but I can roll with it ! I do like to branch out and show my audience that I can do other things. Recently I’ve been painting fish.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I am as open a book as a book can be. Since I am still meeting people, not everyone knows that I’m a baby Michigander! I’ve spent my time in Michigan trying to see all the things I can see. I saw my first two lighthouses this year!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jadenitro.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/jadenitroart
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557414092180
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@JadeNitroArt
- Other: https://substack.com/@jadenitro
Image Credits
Vanessa Kolc (Featured photo)
