Quick Facts
Biography
Shirley Jones (born 14 November 1934) is a Welsh writer, poet and printmaker whose works include limited-edition artist's books published from 1983 to 2016. As a printmaker, she is known particularly for her mezzotints.
Jones's work has been widely exhibited, including solo retrospective exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, National Library of Wales and Newport Museum. Many of her artist's books were published under her imprint The Red Hen Press (not to be confused with the Californian publisher Red Hen Press).
Early life and education
Jones was born on 14 November 1934 in Rhondda Valley, Wales. Her father was an unemployed coal miner, who later became a railway signalman. She studied literature at Cardiff University, where she met and later married Ken Jones. They had three children, who feature in a number of her books. After graduating from Cardiff, Jones taught English for seven years, while also taking various art classes. She finally left teaching in 1974, aged forty, to study art full time. She took courses in sculpture and printmaking at Croydon College of Art and Design, leading on to a course in advanced printmaking in 1975-1976.
Exhibitions
Jones' work has been the subject of over twenty-five solo exhibitions. Major retrospective exhibitions include:
- 'Two Moons: Ten Years of the Red Hen Press', National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (6 Oct. 1993 – 8 January 1994)
- 'Shirley Jones: Artist, Writer, Printer. Retrospective Exhibition' National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (1995)
- 'The Written Word, the Printed Page: 25 Years of the Red Hen Press: an exhibition of the artists' books and prints by Shirley Jones' Newport Museum and Art Gallery, Newport (2003)
- 'The Artist's Book in Wales: Shirley Jones and the Red Hen Press' Vassar College Library, Poughkeepsie, New York (January-May, 2013)
- 'Shirley Jones and the Red Hen Press' National Museum of Wales (20 April – 30 June 2013)
Collections
Shirley Jones' work has been collected by over a hundred institutions, particularly in the United States. Notable public collections of Jones's work include those held by the National Museum of Wales, The British Library, The Library of Congress, Cornell University Vassar College, Smith College, and Wellesley College.
Cardiff University acquired a complete collection of her books by donation in 2019 and is currently digitising the works, on the understanding that Jones's wish is that all the images should be made available on a Creative Commons Licence (CC-BY). High resolution versions of some of her prints have also been make available on Wikimedia, including those in the Gallery.
Publications
Jones's publications are listed below. Most are artist's books published by The Red Hen Press during the period of 1975–2016, with print-runs of between six and fifty copies. Many of the books (see first footnote) have now been digitized and are available as jpg and tiff files as part of the Cardiff University, Digital Special Collections: "The Red Hen Press: hand-printed, hand-bound artists' books from Shirley Jones' The Red Hen Press". Nineteen of the books (see second footnote) are also available as e-books on the Internet Archive, which allows them to be read in manner closer to their original format. The 'Contents' section in the table is based on the descriptions in Ronald Patkus' bibliography and Jones' reflections on her books. The translations from Old English and Middle Welsh are by Jones.
| Year | Title | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| 1975 | Words and Prints | Twelve prints and poems |
| 1977 | Windows | Five poems and prints with personal themes |
| 1978 | The Same Sun | Social, political and personal poems with nine colour etchings |
| 1979 | Backgrounds | Ten poems and colour etchings based on Jones' experiences |
| 1979 | Rhymes for our Times | Reimagined children's nursery rhymes, accompanied by colour prints |
| 1980 | Greek Dance | A poem and five etchings about Lindos in Rhodes |
| 1980 | Sunflower Rainflower Pale Morning Star | Three poems and prints |
| 1983 | Scop Hwīlum Sang | 'Sometimes a Poet Sang': six etchings inspired by Old English poetry |
| 1984 | Impressions | Eight aquatints with poems inspired by Jones' first visit to the USA |
| 1986 | A Dark Side of the Sun | Six poems and mezzotints about people 'who live in the shadow of the sun' |
| 1986 | Ellor-Gāst | 'Alien Spirit': the monsters in Beowulf |
| 1988 | The Making of Ellor-Gāst | Short booklet about the difficulties encountered in making Ellor-Gāst |
| 1987 | Nocturne for Wales | Five aquatints and short stories about Jones' childhood in the Rhondda Valley |
| 1988 | For Gladstone | Stories of a family cat, accompanied by eleven mezzotints |
| 1989 | Soft Ground, Hard Ground | Prose and poetry about being a woman, with twelve colour etchings |
| 1990 | Five Flowers for my Father | Eulogy to her father, with five prints and prose pieces |
| 1991 | Two Moons | Nine mezzotints and poems about those labeled as 'mental defectives' |
| 1993 | Ordinary Cats | Six mezzotints and poems about cats |
| 1993 | Llym awel | 'Sharp the wind': Early Medieval Welsh poetry: translations, introductions and seven prints |
| 1995 | Falls the Shadow | Five essays by Jones about idealism and its outcomes, with six prints |
| 1999 | Etched in Autumn | Poems and prints responding to Jones' return to Wales and its landscape |
| 1999 | Y Morgrugyn Cloff | 'The Lame Ant': seven tales from The Mabinogion |
| 2000 | Footprints | Twelve mezzotints and short stories about family pets |
| 2002 | Etched Out | Five mezzotints and prose pieces about the Epynt clearance |
| 2005 | Chwedlau | 'Legends': essays by Jones about fifteen centuries of Welsh myths and folklore, with seven prints |
| 2007 | Taith Arall | 'An other journey': a commentary on Giraldus Cambrensis' tour of Wales in 1188. |
| 2009 | Terra Contigua | 'Border Country': a visual response to the poems of Henry Vaughan and Thomas Traherne |
| 2011 | A Thonau Gwyllt y Mor | 'And the Wild Waves of the Sea': Five poems and etchings about the coast of medieval Wales |
| 2016 | The Quest | The quest of Culhwch and Olwen in The Mabinogion |
| 2019 | Mezzotint and the Artist's Book: a forty year journey | An autobiographical account of Jones' printmaking and book production |
Bibliography
Jones's artwork has been covered in the following books, journals and newspaper articles:
- Suzanne Askham (13 February 1994). 'Balancing the book: on a publisher putting profit second', Financial Times Weekend, p. xiv.
- Beth Cook (April 2000). 'Shirley Jones and the Red Hen Press' Parenthesis, Vol. 4.
- Colin Franklin (Autumn 1998). 'The books and prints of Shirley Jones', The Private Library, pp. 115–123
- Dorothy Harrop (Winter 1996). 'Review of Falls the Shadow', The Private Library, pp. 183–84.
- Dorothy Harrop (1998). 'Private Presses' in Philip Henry Jones and Eiluned Rees (eds.), A Nation and its Books (National Library of Wales & Aberystwyth Centre for the Book), pp. 376–77
- Shirley Jones (2019). Mezzotint and the Artist's Book: a forty year journey (The Red Hen Press)
- Newport (2003). The Written Word, the Printed Page: 25 Years of the Red Hen Press: an exhibition of the artists' books and prints by Shirley Jones (Newport Museum and Art Gallery)
- Ronald D Patkus (2013). Shirley Jones and the Red Hen Press: a bibliography by Ronald D. Patkus with commentary by the artist Vassar College, USA, 79 pp. ISBN 9780615732435
- Anne Price-Owen (Winter 1995). 'Review of Llym Awel (Llanhamlach, Brecon: Red Hen Press)', Printmaking Today, Vol. 4. no. 4, pp. 11–12
- Anne Price-Owen (1999). 'Review of Y Morgrugyn Cloff (Llanhamlach, Brecon: Red Hen Press)', Printmaking Today, Vol. 9. no. 4, p. 33
