Interviewer: The first time I heard about you, it was in passing---everyone around me knew you. I heard from folks: 'Jesse is a real artist, he's the painter who started his career by painting on the side of buses.' It was the greatest introduction I had ever heard and I knew I had to meet you as soon as possible!
Jessie: [Jessie laughs LOUDLY]
Interviewer: When did your art process start? In your studio, you have a lot of work with spray paint and I am sure you have even more tucked inside books and other pieces fading on walls across Southern California---do you remember when you started building your practice?
Jessie: My interest in graffiti and tagging started in middle school, when I was around 11 years old. I started spray painting at 14 years old. It's funny because at 14 you aren't allowed to buy spray paint--this was the early 2000's in Santa Monica. So the way me and my friends would get spray paint at the time was by walking through the alleys of Santa Monica. In that part of town, the garages of Santa Monica opened into the alley ways, which anyone could walk through. People would leave their garage doors open! We would walk by and 90% of the time the garages had cans of spray paint, so we ran in and took them. Thankfully we never got caught, but we weren't going in there to take power tools or anything else--we were just looking for one specific thing: Spray Paint. If we found cans in the garages--at least 3 to 4 cans per person--we would go to the freeways at night and paint there!
Interviewer: It sounds like you were restricted from practicing your process--which to me, means you didn't have the support to practice your art making and healing journey. Are you making your artwork on the margins? To put it another way, after you got your spray paint--where did you start painting?
Jessie: I was doing graffiti on walls and buses in my teen years, my favorite thing was the trains. You might never see it again and it felt like when it left the train yard, who knows who is going to see it? So it had to be good. There was nothing better than working on the side of a train, it was the best. But there was this one time, it wasn't on a train, but on a yard--an empty yard behind a body shop. I was already a young adult, I took the day off from work and I was excited to visit this spot to paint, which was still an 'illegal' spot. I get there and there was no room to paint, every part of the wall was covered--so I should have left because I didn't have any buff paint, but I looked around and honestly found the wackest graffiti and decided to started going over it with my sketch using spray paint--I was sketching my piece over someone else's work. This is the middle of the day, in the middle of the week---so you would think no one was around. I am almost done covering two letters, I hear footsteps walking towards me, than I hear from behind me "Aye! What are you doing?" Out of all the days of the week, the person who's graffiti I was going over shows up. Painting over someone's work is a rule you shouldn't break in graffiti. This dude got really mad, he threatened me, and then pulled out a weapon on me---I didn't want to upset him anymore, but really, I was just painting over the wackest thing there [Jessie laughs]. We ended up fixing the piece together.
Interviewer: No way! So, you couldn't access spray paint when you were younger, now that you can buy spray paint...the world doesn't have enough walls for artists to paint 'legally.' The world seems to have kept trying to stop you from painting, but you kept finding ways to get your ideas out there!
Jessie: I changed, I didn't want to continue the cycle that I saw growing up. I didn't want to get hurt, go to jail, or lose my transitional housing. I started doing more canvas work at my transitional housing, cause there was a staff member who would come and he was a graffiti artist, but he worked on canvas. At this time, I also got a hold of a graffiti documentary--in the documentary an artist said something along the lines: 'Anyone can do lettering, but what else are you going to keep creating...besides graffiti?' Hearing him say that, another artist, made me think about my work.
For me, I asked myself: What am I going to do that stands out? My first thought was, I am not going to be another graffiti artist doing graffiti on canvas [small laugh]. I wanted to do something more versatile, something different. I knew for myself that when doing graffiti, my favorite part was doing the fill-in's--it made me think of different color combinations, designs, different forms of contrast. I wanted to focus more of THAT on the canvas and continue to grow.
As I made more abstract, I very often heard, "I don't like abstract art, but I really like yours." That's saying something [small laugh]. That has always been the goal, making that transition to stand out.
I do want to say that illegal graffiti came out better--you are thinking on the spot, you need to create something fast, the energy from doing it illegally made the designs better--but I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. I have had nights wondering to myself, "what am I doing here? I am too old for this!"
Interviewer: You are very open about having experienced the child welfare system. I also experienced this system and I know that it changes us in our real life and can also impact how we approach our art practice---all that comes from being a former foster youth, how does it show up in your artwork?
Jessie: In my teenage years, graffiti was the release of everything I was going through at that time. All that dysfunction---I was able to take all of that, those messed up feelings and mental and physical chaos---I was able to apply it as a creative outlet onto the wall.
Interviewer: Now that you have been conducting your practice for a while, over 20 years--how does your identity show up in your work? Does it still show up in your work, 20 years later?
Jessie: Yes! In the titles of my paintings, when I create the art--as I am creating it, subconsciously it's coming up in my work. Until the artwork is done, I sit back and figure out what it is...I wait a few days, or weeks. Then it grows on me...I keep coming back to it [LAUGHS]….sometimes I have titles related to personal past experiences, other times I don't. Like that one [points to one of his paintings hanging on the wall] it's called Dancing in the Forest....It reminds me of a morning when its about to rain, when it's foggy and you can see the contrast between the dark gray clouds, the big trees, and the natural greenery around us. That style is inspired by nature...What helps figuring out if it does relate to my life is the color scheme....Before I start a painting I have to put a color scheme together and my thought on arraignment is: how will contrast work, how will colors work with each other---its like trying to build a puzzle! Than later I figure out what it means!
Interviewer: That makes sense! I remember when we went to Home Depot together to find your paint swatches for the indoor mural you did last year---we were there for at least an hour! [Jessie Laughing] I saw your eyes bouncing around the room, you jumping between swatches because when one color option changes, the other colors you have need to change, which is really poetic about your practice. Everything on your canvas is connected, all parts are talking to one another, and even the smallest changes---in our art work or even in our lives---impacts everything.
Jessie: That's why it's the very first thing, where it starts, the colors. I want them to do all that for me. The color scheme is really important in my projects. I choose every color and make sure they are in the right place, and if the colors don't work together, I need to change them.
Interviewer: Your full body of work has different elements and approaches, not just abstract, but a lot of abstract components---why abstract art? What about this style connects you to spaces of healing?
Jessie: Abstract art lets me say things I can't say with words. For example, yellow and orange--when I start with those two bright colors, what I am going to put next to them? What is going to go on top of them? I have to add contrast---Subconsciously, my artwork does that, connecting my ideas to color, layers--these layers represent my life, how things change, progression and the continuation of growth---and then comes the placement of these colors. I want my artwork to be different, I want my work to be a positive outlet, and the layers helps me achieve my goal of positive progression. Sometimes the layers reflect childhood and the growth of childhood into adulthood. My painting, From Dysfunction Come's Creativity, really helps capture this idea. In the end, I let the work speak for itself.
