Fire on the prairie is not destruction. It is renewal. A controlled prairie burn — set deliberately, watched carefully, allowed to do its quiet work — clears the accumulated thatch of dead plant matter, returns essential nitrogen and minerals to the soil, kills invasive species that would otherwise turn open grassland into forest, and warms the dark, ash-rich ground enough to accelerate the germination of native seeds. Many prairie plants are fire-dependent — they evolved with regular burns and actually thrive in their wake, sending up new growth more vigorous than the year before. What looks, from a distance, like devastation is in fact one of the most essential cycles in the ecology of the American grassland. Jennifer Drinkwater painted the renewal. Fire of Life is the mug for the people who understand that some seasons require burning down to grow forward — that not every fire is the end of something, and sometimes the most generous act is the controlled release of what was already finished. The prairie comes back greener. So does everyone willing to let the old growth go.
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.
Fire on the prairie is not destruction. It is renewal. A controlled prairie burn — set deliberately, watched carefully, allowed to do its quiet work — clears the accumulated thatch of dead plant matter, returns essential nitrogen and minerals to the soil, kills invasive species that would otherwise turn open grassland into forest, and warms the dark, ash-rich ground enough to accelerate the germination of native seeds. Many prairie plants are fire-dependent — they evolved with regular burns and actually thrive in their wake, sending up new growth more vigorous than the year before. What looks, from a distance, like devastation is in fact one of the most essential cycles in the ecology of the American grassland. Jennifer Drinkwater painted the renewal. Fire of Life is the mug for the people who understand that some seasons require burning down to grow forward — that not every fire is the end of something, and sometimes the most generous act is the controlled release of what was already finished. The prairie comes back greener. So does everyone willing to let the old growth go.
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.
