Shirley Jones (artist)

Shirley Jones (born 14 November 1934) is a Welsh writer, poet and printmaker whose works include limited-edition artist's books published from 1983 to 2016. As a printmaker, she is known particularly for her mezzotints.

Jones's work has been widely exhibited, including solo retrospective exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, National Library of Wales and Newport Museum. Many of her artist's books were published under her imprint The Red Hen Press (not to be confused with the Californian publisher Red Hen Press).

Early life and education
Jones was born on 14 November 1934 in Rhondda Valley, Wales. Her father was an unemployed coal miner, who later became a railway signalman. She studied literature at Cardiff University, where she met and later married Ken Jones. They had three children, who feature in a number of her books. After graduating from Cardiff, Jones taught English for seven years, while also taking various art classes. She finally left teaching in 1974, aged forty, to study art full time. She took courses in sculpture and printmaking at Croydon College of Art and Design, leading on to a course in advanced printmaking in 1975–1976.

Exhibitions
Jones' work has been the subject of over twenty-five solo exhibitions. Major retrospective exhibitions include: Jones' work has also featured in many thematic exhibitions, such as Cardiff University's 'Neighbourly Devils' (31 October 2017 - 31 March 2018).
 * 'Two Moons: Ten Years of the Red Hen Press', National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (6 Oct. 1993 – 8 January 1994)
 * 'Shirley Jones: Artist, Writer, Printer. Retrospective Exhibition' National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (1995)
 * 'The Written Word, the Printed Page: 25 Years of the Red Hen Press: an exhibition of the artists' books and prints by Shirley Jones' Newport Museum and Art Gallery, Newport (2003)
 * 'The Artist's Book in Wales: Shirley Jones and the Red Hen Press' Vassar College Library, Poughkeepsie, New York (January–May, 2013)
 * 'Shirley Jones and the Red Hen Press' National Museum of Wales (20 April – 30 June 2013)

Collections
Shirley Jones' work has been collected by over a hundred institutions, particularly in the United States. Notable public collections of Jones's work include those held by the National Museum of Wales, The British Library, The Library of Congress, Cornell University Vassar College, Smith College, and Wellesley College.

Cardiff University acquired a complete collection of her books by donation in 2019 and is currently digitising the works, on the understanding that Jones's wish is that all the images should be made available on a Creative Commons Licence (CC-BY). High resolution versions of some of her prints have also been make available on Wikimedia, including those in the Gallery. On 7 March 2024 Cardiff issued a press release and video about the donation to mark World Book Day and International Women's Day.

Publications
Jones's publications are listed below. Most are artist's books published by The Red Hen Press during the period of 1975–2016, with print-runs of between six and fifty copies. Many of the books (see first footnote) have now been digitized and are available as jpg and tiff files as part of the Cardiff University, Digital Special Collections: "The Red Hen Press: hand-printed, hand-bound artists' books from Shirley Jones' The Red Hen Press". Nineteen of the books (see second footnote) are also available as e-books on the Internet Archive, which allows them to be read in manner closer to their original format. The 'Contents' section in the table is based on the descriptions in Ronald Patkus' bibliography and Jones' reflections on her books. The translations from Old English and Middle Welsh are by Jones.