Janet Gervers: Fine Artist, Photographer, Painter
From her love of painting and drawing as a child with encouragement from her parents, others noticed her artistic abilities: from teachers to students, family and friends, plus winning local art contests, Janet Gervers developed into an artist and art curator.
While Janet was in high school taking Studio Art AP classes (Walnut Hills High School, Cincinnati, OH), she was invited to participate in drawing classes at the famed Art Academy of Cincinnati and took the opportunity to learn life drawing skills. She also took Art History AP class while at Walnut Hills High School, a well-known college preparatory school.
Janet-Gervers Photography, Paintbrush, 4×5 format Photography 1985
From there, Janet decided to focus on design with a major in Graphic Design from the School of Design, Architecture, Art & Planning at the University of Cincinnati. This was a 5 year program that included internships as an integrated part of the program. Janet worked in New York City, Chicago and Boca Raton Florida during her school internships and learned real world skills in competitive environments and got to live in some exciting cities.
Janet Gervers graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a Bachelor of Science in Graphic Design in 1987. While she had some computer experience from her internship at IBM in Boca Raton, the school taught traditional layout and pasteup/mechanical art methods used to create printed graphics. Janet really wanted to learn how to use the computer and took it upon herself to learn how to use the Mac, when it was still in its infancy. She took night classes at her alma mater and started using the computer for freelance projects.
A memorable project that combined her art and design skills was a hand drawn logo that won in a logo contest for an office at the University of Cincinnati, The Office of Women’s Programs and Services. She went on to design posters, communications material for the office and several other offices at the university.
She won several design awards from the esteemed Art Directors Club of Cincinnati for her design projects for the University of Cincinnati and Federated Department Stores. She had a position in the advertising department for 4 years at the Mid Western department store headquarters for Lazarus (now Macy’s), when it was headquartered in Cincinnati. Her photography was also accepted into a juried art show during this time in Cincinnati.
Janet Gervers Digital Art, Calla Moon, 2005
Eventually, moving to the West Coast in 1994, starting out in San Francisco, moving to Pasadena, then Venice (aka Venice Beach) the creative community in Los Angeles. This got her start back into the art world. Janet concentrated on digital art, namely the combination of multiple photos, manipulated in Photoshop to form a new image, in addition to art completely generated on the computer.
Janet Gervers Photograph, Maui Waterfall 2007
Janet’s digital art was included in several exhibits, both invational and juried, in addition to exhibits she curated. She started the Venice Art Collective in 2003, providing a forum for local artists to be seen in a gallery setting, which was almost unheard of at the time in Venice and Los Angeles. After a few shows, her friends and art mentors suggested that she include her art in shows, so that got the ball rolling again and her art was in shows at the well known Sponto Gallery, LACDA (LA Center for Digital Art) and the first Venice Art Crawl among others. She also wrote about the Venice Art Crawl in her popular Venice Blog, Abbot Kinney First Fridays and help raise the visibility of the local art event, which has become recognized in the LA art scene. She also curated and organized an art show of Los Angeles artists at Electric Lodge for the Other Venice Film Festival.
Janet Gervers, Digital Photograph, Car Wash & Roses 2013
The digital artwork seen in this First Venice Art Crawl, “Angel Over Venice” (featured at top of page) was also displayed in Los Angeles 11th District, Councilman Bill Rosendahl’s West Los Angeles office from 2008-2009. “Angel Over Venice” was also exhibited in 2009 for the inaugural Juried International Exhibition for the World Art Foundation in Southern California.
More recently, Janet has focused on photography and delved into painting and drawing again!