Hepler-Takens, Jennie

Jennie Hepler-Takens' ancestors, on every front, were junk collectors. Her maternal grandmother took in washing and ironing to help support her 5 children. In her armchair years, Jennie would sit at her grandmother's feet and worship her stories. Her grandmother would talk for hours about fancy linen and well-appointed cotton textiles. She grew up dirt floor poor and wore flour sack clothing as a child. Being a lover of fabrics, she gathered all the information she could about textiles. She taught me to pray in public to God, put in private we prayed to Saint Best Bib and Tucker, Saint Glad Rags and Saint Tumble Down Scruff. Her Grandma would save rich, well-worn scraps of textiles for me to feel. She was teaching Jennie to curate what she liked. Her grandmother was threading the needle of her artistic imagination without even knowing it. Antiquated textile plays a large role in Jennie's creative life. She feels as if incorporation of antique fabrics in her work is a bit like weaving in old stories. Antique fabric is like a vault, remembering everything that came before.

Jennie's artwork centers around Halloween. The holiday pulls her in completely. While she has no formal training in fine arts, she has devoted her life to learning and developing her eye for curation and collecting. Her grandmother was raised on the bank of Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee. Her grandfather grew up just a tumble out of Tennessee, in Kentucky. Together they traveled North an settled in Battle Creek, Michigan. They made a salvage yard, a family, and they bettered their community. Jennie grew up in between the smell of grease and oil from the salvage yard and the antique collection of her grandmother. Jennie feels her entire life is like marginalia.

Jennie works under the name My Dearest Witch in her Battle Creek, Michigan studio. She makes Halloween work all year, but she offers it only one a year at Bewitching Peddlers of Halloween. She truly feels most alive in the Fall. "This is when I feel most at home in my skin and most creative." Jennie's work follows threads of beautiful decay and magical wonder. As she makes her own work throughout the year, she also curates Bewitching PEddlers of Halloween, a Halloween fine art show in Marshall, MI.

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