Due to football tailgating in Lowry Mall, the north entrance of Ellis Library will be closed all day Saturday, Oct. 13. You may still access Ellis Library through the west entrance.

Jan L Coffman, M Ed

Art Photography

jcoffman07@yahoo.com

“It is in the digital world that Jan Coffman’s creative gifts and foresight have come together. A comfortable chair, computer software and stylus pen allow the warm, sensitive soul of a painter, steady hand of a sketch-maker and keen eye of a photographer to converge. Starting with photographs, Coffman brings obscured details to light in some and makes the origins of others unrecognizable, imparting a hand-drawn or painted quality; the outcome is innovative and no less inspired than a print made by applying damp brush strokes to physical paper.”

Columbia Tribune, Columbia, Missouri
I love to walk in nature settings.  That is where I find my paintings.  I call my paintings contemporary realism as I paint my digital photographs with my digital bushes and sketching tools.  As I paint, I relive the feelings I had at the time I was taking the picture.

My training has been in technology design and education.  As an educator, technology trainer, and web designer, I developed my digital skills of sketching and watercolors in my web design work.  In retirement, I am now able to devote more time to my passion of digital painting.

I paint layer upon layer with the ability to remove layers as I am painting with my digital brushes.  I may pick-up the color from a photograph or go to my digital pallet for a new color.  With an endless number of painting tools, I use my Wacom drawing tablet to make strokes with the pressure and turn of my hand.  If I want to experiment with an idea, I can add a layer and delete it if it doesn’t work.  When I’m finished with a painting, the layers can then be compressed into one painting.

I do my own printing and framing of my paintings.  I print my art using archival pigment-based inks and acid-free watercolor papers.  I use quality mats that are pH Neutral and backing boards that are acid free.  They are matted and framed 16×20 or 21×27 inches with black frames.

Jan L. Coffman
Master of Education, University of Missouri, 2001

Art Exhibitions and Honors

• First place, Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art Member Show, St. Joseph, MO, 2012.
• Winner of Les Bourgeois Winery Collector’s Series annual Label Art Competition.
• Columbia Art League, second place, Columbia, MO
• Visions Photography Exhibition Bank Purchase Award, Landmark Bank, Columbia, MO
• Mizzou Alumni Association Calendar, Columbia, MO
• Accepted into the Missouri Top 50 Fine Arts Exhibition at the Missouri State Fair
• Exhibited at the Foundry Art Centre, St. Charles, Missouri

• Best of Missouri Hands Featured Artist, BOMH web site: http://www.bestofmissourihands.org/FeaturedArtists_Past/featured_jancoffman.htm

• Columbia Tribune Features Article, 2009

• Aarik Danielsen of the Columbia Tribune wrote about Jan’s art a second time, this time on his blog:  January 27, 2010,  http://www.columbiatribune.com/weblogs/art-axis/2010/jan/27/coffmans-digital-watercolors-continue-to-impress/
• Lenoir Woods Art Exhibition, Columbia, MO
• Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, St. Joseph, MO

• CAL Community Exhibits Program, Columbia, MO
• Cherry Hill Summerfest & Art Show, Columbia, MO
• Mizzou Night with the Arts, Columbia, MO

President Obama and governors in fifteen states now recognize October as Information Literacy Awareness Month.  Information Literacy Awareness Month is an initiative of the National Forum on Information Literacy.  When members of the MU Libraries Instruction Committee were contacted by NFIL over the summer, we asked Missouri Governor Jay Nixon to participate in the initiative, he issued Missouri’s proclamation, which reads, in part:

WHEREAS, information literacy provides the tools and skills need to find, evaluate and use credible information from all sources in our constantly evolving, information-inundated world; and […]

WHEREAS, information literacy is a crucial component of education and should be taught from kindergarten throughout an individual’s lifespan by schools and other agencies involved in the collection, conservation and dissemination of information […]

NOW THEREFORE, I, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, do hereby proclaim October 2012 to be INFORMATION LITERACY MONTH IN MISSOURI.

In recognition of Governor Nixon’s proclamation, the MU Libraries and the MU Bookstore are sponsoring an online Information Literacy Quiz, to be open during the month of October.  Two prizewinners will be selected from among all entrants with 100% correct answers on the quiz for bookstore gift certificates totaling $150.

 

Related links:

Full text of Obama’s proclamation (2009)

PDF: Full text of Nixon’s proclamation (2012)

National Forum on Information Literacy

Libraries Thriving Blog

Date: Tues., Oct. 23, 2012
Time: 1 p.m.
Location: Ellis Library Colonnade

“Sister Novelists in the Age of Austen: Jane and Anna Maria Porter”
with Prof. Devoney Looser
Jane and Anna Maria Porter were celebrated novelists who, for many decades, were more famous than their contemporary Jane Austen. Why did the Porter sisters’ celebrity status dwindle, as Austen’s literary star rose? Devoney Looser, who is writing a biography of the Porter sisters, will share her findings about their fascinating and previously undocumented nineteenth-century lives, showing how (as Anna Maria Porter once put it) a female author’s public fame could be the death knell of her private happiness.

This event is free and open to the public.