Click here to listen. © Jane Pollak 2026 Years ago, as an art major in college, I visited an Adolph Gottlieb exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. A guard pointed out an elderly man moving through the space ahead of me. "That's the artist," he whispered. ...
Click here to listen. © Jane Pollak 2026 The day after Professor Cavanaugh asked me to be the property mistress for the fall 1969 production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, he called me into his office. I knew nothing about the plot line or magnitude of...
Click here to listen. © Jane Pollak 2026 I moved to New Jersey on March 11, leaving Manhattan after nearly fourteen years as a full-time resident. A team of organizers packed me up on the 10th. Movers hauled my belongings to my new home at Lantern Hill...
Click here to listen. © Jane Pollak 2025 As a fellow card-carrying member of AARP, I barely blinked when one friend moved from Greenwich, CT to Sarasota, FL. I was only mildly curious when another friend told me about her winter place in Arizona. But,...
Click here to listen. © Jane Pollak 2025 It all began with a single remark from my sister at a craft show. Meredith, my older sibling, once helped me work a fair back in those exhibiting days. My batik eggs drew large crowds, and as demand grew, I raised...
Click here to listen. © Jane Pollak 2025 Over five decades as an artist, I’ve experienced my share of milestones, surprises and reinventions. What has remained constant is the joy of creating and the deep satisfaction when someone connects with a piece...
Click here to listen. © Jane Pollak 2025(illustrated with pieces of my art process along the way) In March, my granddaughter Chloe became Bat Mitzvah – a time of recognition and celebration when a 13-year-old Jewish girl is welcomed into her...
Click here to listen. Talk about ink in one’s veins! This birth announcement, created by my dad, is prominently displayed in my baby book from 1948. My mother, too, had a way of making things newsworthy just by naming them. When a neighbor in the Midwest...
Click here to listen. This post tells the story of an exception to the rule of thumb: Never meet your heroes. In the early ’70s, when my art students from Westhill High School competed in the state’s Scholastic Art Awards annual competition, we were upstaged and...
On waking each morning I meditate for 23.5 minutes (a TM practice) as a way to connect with myself before interacting with others. I then take in an uplifting page from my daily reader which helps open up my connection to the world beyond my own thoughts. Then, as...
In reviewing this past year and considering where to put my own feet in 2024, I checked to see where those tootsies had taken me in 2023. I used two tools for that measurement: my Google Calendar and the spreadsheet I keep for calls with my action partner....
When I first started my business, I called it, very imaginatively, AN EGG BY JANE. Gosh! How'd I think that one up? During my keynote address, I repeated a conversation I'd frequently have with new vendors. "What's the name of your company?" they'd inquire. "An Egg...
When I submitted my first chapter to the editor of my book, Decorating Eggs, I heard back from her with a brief note instructing me only to eliminate the quotation marks I was using to emphasize certain words. That was it. No critique of the writing, simply a...
The drive to the Danbury Federal Correction Institution and the facility itself were surprisingly attractive, if you could look past the sea of barbed wire and fencing all around. I was there last Friday and felt a little bit nervous upon arrival. We were screened...
I love the movies, and catching up on all the latest offerings is part of my August vacation pleasure. Over the weekend we saw (500) Days of Summer which I thoroughly enjoyed. One scene particularly stayed in my mind for its personal truth which applies to my...
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