The day begins on the Delta the way it has begun for ten thousand years: with light. First a softening at the horizon, then a streak of pale gold across the flat fields, then the slow, full arrival of sunrise washing everything it touches in the particular color of early Mississippi morning. The land receives the day before anything else does — before the trucks start, before the equipment hums, before the workers walk out. Jennifer Drinkwater grew up in this light. Her Land collection traces the daily cycle of the Mississippi Delta — daylight to dark, cultivation to harvest — as both a working agricultural rhythm and the longest-running pattern in the region's life. Daylight is the prologue. The land waking up. The hush before the day takes hold. Some cups of coffee deserve to be held in exactly this hour.
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.
The day begins on the Delta the way it has begun for ten thousand years: with light. First a softening at the horizon, then a streak of pale gold across the flat fields, then the slow, full arrival of sunrise washing everything it touches in the particular color of early Mississippi morning. The land receives the day before anything else does — before the trucks start, before the equipment hums, before the workers walk out. Jennifer Drinkwater grew up in this light. Her Land collection traces the daily cycle of the Mississippi Delta — daylight to dark, cultivation to harvest — as both a working agricultural rhythm and the longest-running pattern in the region's life. Daylight is the prologue. The land waking up. The hush before the day takes hold. Some cups of coffee deserve to be held in exactly this hour.
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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