The honey bee is one of the great quiet workers of the natural world. Bees pollinate roughly eighty-five percent of human food crops, contribute over thirty-four billion dollars annually to U.S. agriculture alone, and are responsible — directly or indirectly — for about a third of every meal we eat. They are also in serious trouble. Pests, pathogens, pesticides, and habitat loss have driven catastrophic colony declines, and many wild bee species are now genuinely threatened with extinction. The story of the bee has become the story of how we treat the small, essential things we depend on most. Jennifer Drinkwater painted the buzz with the reverence it deserves. Buzzed is the mug for the people who notice the pollinators, plant for them, advocate for them, and refuse to take the quiet workers of the world for granted. The bees made the food. The bees made the flowers. The bees made nearly everything. Pour your coffee. Send a small thank you.
About Artist Jennifer Drinkwater:
Jennifer Drinkwater is a Mississippi native, a painter, and the founder of The What's Good Project — a community art initiative she launched in 2019 to help towns recognize and celebrate the resources in their own backyards.
Her path to the work wasn't linear. After earning a double major in studio art and anthropology at Tulane University, Jennifer spent summers doing trail maintenance on the Appalachian Trail, served in AmeriCorps teaching middle-school environmental classes in Massachusetts, and seriously considered graduate study in environmental education before realizing — mid-section-hike on the AT — that the answer was painting. She earned her M.F.A. in painting at East Carolina University and joined Iowa State University in 2015 in a one-of-a-kind joint appointment between the Department of Art and Visual Culture and ISU Extension and Outreach. She calls the mix “stupefying and magical,” and tells her students: “Don't compartmentalize your interests, because you don't know how they will braid together in life.”
Her work has been featured in Surface Design Journal, New American Paintings, and Studio Visit magazine, with solo exhibitions in venues across the United States. The What's Good Project itself has raised approximately $16,000 for nonprofits in participating towns since its inception, and Jennifer's paintings now hang in homes, museums, and community spaces from Iowa to Mississippi to the Mississippi Delta — and well beyond.
She is also, in her own words, “a glass-half-empty kind of person. I am not an optimist by nature. I'm more of a realist.” Which is precisely what makes her work matter. The What's Good Project was a deliberate decision — a redirecting of attention — born from the belief that “when we shift our focus from what's wrong to what's right, we can affect positive change where we live.” Her paintings are not naïve celebrations. They are hard-won attention. Multi-layered acrylics rendered in vivid color, layered over patterns she returns to again and again, because she believes — like the communities she documents — that what's underneath the surface is always worth seeing.
Jennifer Drinkwater is a Kate Shu Collective STAR Resident Artist and a valued member of the Monarch Shoppe family.
About this Mug:
A Kate Shu Collective exclusive, available only at the Monarch Shoppe.
The honey bee is one of the great quiet workers of the natural world. Bees pollinate roughly eighty-five percent of human food crops, contribute over thirty-four billion dollars annually to U.S. agriculture alone, and are responsible — directly or indirectly — for about a third of every meal we eat. They are also in serious trouble. Pests, pathogens, pesticides, and habitat loss have driven catastrophic colony declines, and many wild bee species are now genuinely threatened with extinction. The story of the bee has become the story of how we treat the small, essential things we depend on most. Jennifer Drinkwater painted the buzz with the reverence it deserves. Buzzed is the mug for the people who notice the pollinators, plant for them, advocate for them, and refuse to take the quiet workers of the world for granted. The bees made the food. The bees made the flowers. The bees made nearly everything. Pour your coffee. Send a small thank you.
About Artist Jennifer Drinkwater:
Jennifer Drinkwater is a Mississippi native, a painter, and the founder of The What's Good Project — a community art initiative she launched in 2019 to help towns recognize and celebrate the resources in their own backyards.
Her path to the work wasn't linear. After earning a double major in studio art and anthropology at Tulane University, Jennifer spent summers doing trail maintenance on the Appalachian Trail, served in AmeriCorps teaching middle-school environmental classes in Massachusetts, and seriously considered graduate study in environmental education before realizing — mid-section-hike on the AT — that the answer was painting. She earned her M.F.A. in painting at East Carolina University and joined Iowa State University in 2015 in a one-of-a-kind joint appointment between the Department of Art and Visual Culture and ISU Extension and Outreach. She calls the mix “stupefying and magical,” and tells her students: “Don't compartmentalize your interests, because you don't know how they will braid together in life.”
Her work has been featured in Surface Design Journal, New American Paintings, and Studio Visit magazine, with solo exhibitions in venues across the United States. The What's Good Project itself has raised approximately $16,000 for nonprofits in participating towns since its inception, and Jennifer's paintings now hang in homes, museums, and community spaces from Iowa to Mississippi to the Mississippi Delta — and well beyond.
She is also, in her own words, “a glass-half-empty kind of person. I am not an optimist by nature. I'm more of a realist.” Which is precisely what makes her work matter. The What's Good Project was a deliberate decision — a redirecting of attention — born from the belief that “when we shift our focus from what's wrong to what's right, we can affect positive change where we live.” Her paintings are not naïve celebrations. They are hard-won attention. Multi-layered acrylics rendered in vivid color, layered over patterns she returns to again and again, because she believes — like the communities she documents — that what's underneath the surface is always worth seeing.
Jennifer Drinkwater is a Kate Shu Collective STAR Resident Artist and a valued member of the Monarch Shoppe family.
About this Mug:
A Kate Shu Collective exclusive, available only at the Monarch Shoppe.
