Not all who wander are lost, Tolkien wrote — and some of us have taken the line as a permission slip ever since. To wander is not always to be without direction. Sometimes it is the most directional thing a person can do: follow the sound, follow the light, follow the feeling that there's something worth finding just a little further in. A wood, technically speaking, is smaller and more open than a forest — sparser canopy, more accessible, the kind of place you might enter without quite committing to disappear. Jennifer Drinkwater painted Into the Woods for exactly that kind of wandering: the seekers, the followers-of-curiosity, the ones who have always trusted the path even when they couldn't see where it was going. Into the Woods is the mug for the journey-in-progress. Pour your coffee. Take the next step. Something good is just past the next bend.
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:
- Available in 11 oz, 15 oz, and 20 oz
- Premium white gloss finish
- Printed using dye sublimation technology — the image is fused directly into the ceramic surface for vivid, true-to-life color that won't fade, crack, or peel. Ever.
- Handle stays cool even when your water is boiling
- Microwave and dishwasher safe
- Print quality is exceptional — exactly as pictured
A Kate Shu Collective exclusive, available only at the Monarch Shoppe.
Not all who wander are lost, Tolkien wrote — and some of us have taken the line as a permission slip ever since. To wander is not always to be without direction. Sometimes it is the most directional thing a person can do: follow the sound, follow the light, follow the feeling that there's something worth finding just a little further in. A wood, technically speaking, is smaller and more open than a forest — sparser canopy, more accessible, the kind of place you might enter without quite committing to disappear. Jennifer Drinkwater painted Into the Woods for exactly that kind of wandering: the seekers, the followers-of-curiosity, the ones who have always trusted the path even when they couldn't see where it was going. Into the Woods is the mug for the journey-in-progress. Pour your coffee. Take the next step. Something good is just past the next bend.
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:
- Available in 11 oz, 15 oz, and 20 oz
- Premium white gloss finish
- Printed using dye sublimation technology — the image is fused directly into the ceramic surface for vivid, true-to-life color that won't fade, crack, or peel. Ever.
- Handle stays cool even when your water is boiling
- Microwave and dishwasher safe
- Print quality is exceptional — exactly as pictured
A Kate Shu Collective exclusive, available only at the Monarch Shoppe.
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