Jessie Paige Studio

My art practice is inspired by my attraction to explore the human condition; the subtle but the unmistakable reality and complexity of a person, their story, their context. For 100 days, I drew circles. This project first started as an exercise to sit and enjoy the simple gesture of a circle, of mark-making. As a photographer, this idea was quite attractive to me as I find myself envious of those who create images through painting and drawing. As a mother raising two young girls with autism, I also found myself attracted to how drawing circles daily mirrored one of the hallmark characteristics of autism: restricted and repetitive behaviors. I thought more about this in the actual moment of drawing and took note that as I drew, the repetitiveness and the automatic way in which I drew was a very calming activity amongst what was otherwise a not-so-calm movement of the day. This calming effect is the neurological reason why those with ASD have restricted and repetitive movements. I was oftentimes doing this exercise in the high stress moments, the loud moments, and during the moments when my own daughters’ needs for control, rigidity and emotions were high.

As part of the 100 Day Project, I posted images of my project daily to Instagram to share with my fellow 100 Day artists. Through the process of documenting and sharing the work in real time, I found myself very engaged with the process of what I was doing, not just the artifact that I was creating. As a photographer, I was compelled to document both the drawing and the environment and caption the work to tie the drawings to the place. I have found that two projects co-exist - the small, delicate and quiet drawings themselves as well as the photographs and the documentation of the moment. Circle Drawings have become artifacts of my current exploration into the human condition.

Phoebe & Lucy is a work in progress that began in 2012, a simple daily act of photographing my daughters. This gradually morphed into a considerable emotional interest in the day-to-day, the minute but highly poignant occurrences. Synchronously, my day-to-day consumption for the girls grew as their needs were increasing – Phoebe and Lucy are autistic.

I find myself both acting as the observer and the participant, both participating in the scene while simultaneously responding to it. As a mother and a participant, I am absorbed with my daughters. As a mother and a photographer, I am compelled to share the story of two girls growing up on the autism spectrum, and my story of raising them.

I aim to create an inclusive sense of place in which I am celebrating not just my experience, my daughters’ experiences, or my family’s experiences, but the overall breadth and omnipresence of raising a child and being a child.

Wellspring (working title) is a work in progress that is deriving from a growing number of photographs that I have been making from my own day-to-day life. In this work, the notions of family and home inspire me through my intruigue with the place and the everyday objects that are both lovingly cradled and then seemingly abandoned – temporarily or indefinitely. As I watch this interesting correlation between family/home/things, I am amazed by how seemingly everyday objects can softly morph into artifacts of familiar relationships. They begin to hold the histories that can span generationally within a family and generationally within one’s own self – one’s own recollections of their past, present and future.

The quasi-abstract and highly selective focus photographs create an altered sense of time in which I am celebrating the absence and presence that can exist with a personal space – a home, a backyard. The place becomes a visual oasis that in turn harbors the relics and manifestations of my own memories had, the memories that are being created and the memories that are being imagined. 

Quietus was born after the sudden loss of my mother and the soon thereafter loss of my marriage. I spent 6 weeks camping alone in Northern California and started photographing my surroundings. I became so intrigued with the results that I continued to photograph in remote locations over a period that became three years. During this time, I became more and more intrigued with the tragedies that come with life and how the mind works through the immense suffering that one could face. I found tranquility from my own anguish by escaping to the solitude of the woods where I was shielded by the trees and in the safeguard of my imagination and my thoughts.

In this work, I am deeply involved with the investigation of the human condition, specifically with notions of loss, grief, and death through my relationship with the wilderness. While photographing, I immerse myself for extended periods of time in places that share the familiarities of sensation to those I seek solace: the coldness, the shaded yet emerging light, the sharp smell of the trees, and the calm quiet of the woods.

The intensely dark and ambiguous black and white prints are visual manifestations of my experience while absorbed in nature. I form a very altered sense of scale and perception through my anomalous viewpoint and the distortion created by the selective focus. The imagery and my process of working echo my selective and confusing memory of traumatic events and internal inquiry. I asked myself many questions while photographing and making the images was the way in which I sought answers. 

May – June 2006 (60 Polaroids) was inspired by my intrigue with memory and how families have documented their histories. The 60 images in this piece were taken during a 6-week road trip in Northern California. In this work, I was very attracted to the instant archive of the Polaroid; the time and place and recollection that could be held in your hand at the exact time that the memory was being created with a one-of-a-kind ‘souvenir’. 

Untitled (from Pinhole Series), Panoramic (from Pinhole Series) and San Francisco (from Pinhole Series) were inspired through my own personal grief after the loss of my mother. I spent more and more time thinking about the process of grief and memory. I embrace both the joys and the sorrows of grief – and how this relates to the intangible space of memory. I am fascinated with how recollections are just a series of small moments – each blurred with some truth and some invention – with these ephemeral moments being linked together to create what it is that we choose to remember.

In contrast to the instant and ‘exact’ documentation of the Polaroid, these dark urban scenes and the light and airy out of focus color landscapes create a distorted image that is not unlike the distortion within our own memories. I create groupings of images to mimic how we place small ephemeral moments in a timeline of our choosing that creates an overall image of our experiences – where we can see through the fuzziness of our past in our own unique and personal ways.