j e s s d u n n

Giant sinkholes are opening up all around in the desert surrounding the Dead Sea. Drought and hot conditions have been evaporating the water from the salinated sea, and rainfall has washed away the salt deposits in the earth that have been forming there for millions and millions of years. As a result, the earth has been unexpectantly and impossibly disintegrating at a moment’s notice, creating sinkholes in a seemingly sturdy desert landscape. These sinkholes’ only warning of ensuing and sudden earthen vacancy are usually only visible by a small unassuming depression in the earth’s surface.

In short, small actions are changing history, environment, and topography. These small actions, these hidden geysers of emotional pressure, exist within our own social terrain, and many of these fissures of change are made visible through the weight and pressure of artistic output. Sometimes it takes the ground falling literally out from beneath our feet for a breaking point to be noticed, to alert us or remind us of what sort of time and place we are existing within.

This is the main question I ask with my work.. How and why can art be a something that we fall into-- to observe our surroundings from a different perspective, to be dropped below our usual gravitational comfort (earth under your feet, sky in its usual place), to feel the temperature and light of our physicality in a new way.

I believe in the possibility that art can create change, that it can uproot our perceptions. I believe that art is one of the strongest veins feeding the pulse of the collective human body, and certain messages and dialogues sent down that stream can alter the functions of these organs we call countries, these nerves we call societies, and the heartbeat that connects us indefinitely. Art is the small sliver of space between where our own personal body ends and the world’s begins. It is the slice of matter between our feet and the borrowed earth we move about on. It is the sensory manifestation of consciousness trafficking between people.

Art is the place where our cells meet other cells; it is the action of foreign bodies of thought entering our deepest cavities. It is the rambunctious curiosity of our own internal system craving the touch of different matter, the light bent in someone else’s eyes. Making art is the act of pushing growth through the skin of self housing our seeding minds.

When art becomes political, social, and particularly focused on reaching towards change, it functions as an antidote for apathy, injustice, and misunderstanding gathering in the most sensitive areas of our collective nervous system. Art can open up our tissues and show us where we connect. I make art that is political, that reflects the current time we are in as well as the complications of history, and that speaks about that physically invisible yet intuitively voluminous place where our shared body touches the ground.

R e l a t e d E x p e r i e n c e: 2000-Present Sculpture Artist/Designer Experience gained through creating emotive, metaphorical, and research- based installation art and landscape designs. Experience includes digital media (Adobe Suite and Google Sketch-up), metalwork, textiles work, performance, video, mold-making, scientific processes, writing, educating, giving public lectures, and sparking dialogue through visual communication. 2007-Present Graphic Designer at KUNM Public Radio, 89.9 F.M. Program use includes Adobe Suite. Projects include designing Pledge Drive publicity/ad campaigns, designing monthly listener newsletter, Zounds!. 2007 Residency at the Center for Land Use Interpretation Headquarters in Wendover, UT. Work done while on this residency culminated in the work exhibited at my Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibit. 2004-2006 Instructor for Three-Dimensional Design at the University of New Mexico,
NM. Duties include planning and implementing a syllabus, critiquing and evaluating student work, exposing students to the techniques and methods of making sculpture, giving demonstrations and slide lectures on practices of three-dimensional art-making. 2005 Student of Land Arts of the American West Three-month intensive field study of making art within the landscape of the Southwest. Program involved living, traveling, and making art in various sites across the desert, including CLUI headquarters in Wendover, UT., the Spiral Jetty, the Lightening Field and Marfa, TX. 2004 Artist Assistant to Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens. Duties included sculptural assistance, publicity and promotion, publication editing, portfolio organization, etc. 2004 Instructor of Student-Directed Seminar, Performances and Happenings.
Students were required to do five performances centering on a general chosen theme, conduct extensive research for every piece, coordinate two performance art events, discuss assigned readings, and write an artist statement/research paper. University of California, Santa Cruz.

S e l e c t e d E x h i b i t i o n s: Recent Solo Shows: 2007 Corporeal Land(ing)s: The Human-to-Oil Project, The Harwood Art Center, Albuquerque, NM. 2006 Each of Us is a Body of Water with the Belly of a Growing Mineral, Bivouac Artspace, Albuquerque, NM. 2004 Adaptations, Baskin Senior Gallery, Elena Baskin Visual Art Department, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Recent Group Exhibitions: 2006 “The Human-to-Oil Press” in New Mexico Public Arts’ Temporary Installations Made for the Environment Exhibit, Chamber of Commerce, Silver City, NM. “Water Table for Otero Mesa,” in The Twelfth Annual Juried Graduate Student Exhibition, Jonson Gallery of the University of New Mexico Art Museum, UNM/ Albuquerque, NM. “Water Table for Otero Mesa,” in Wildlands Art! at the Arts Alliance Gallery, Albuquerque, NM. 2005 “Diagram for Substance Transferral” and “Water Table for Otero Mesa” in Land Arts of the American West, John Sommers Gallery, UNM. Albuqueque, NM. “The Ornithology of War” in The Eleventh Annual Juried Graduate Student Exhibition, Jonson Gallery of the University of New Mexico Art Museum, UNM. Albuquerque, NM. 2004 “We all spit salt” in Irwin 2004, Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery, Porter College. University of California, Santa Cruz. Flim Flam Flux: An Evening of Fluxus Performances & Flux Kits, Play Space Gallery, California College of Art. San Francisco, CA.

A w a r d s a n d H o n o r s: Graduate Scholars Scholarship, Department of Landscape Architecture, UNM, 2007. Residency at the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Wendover, UT, 2008. Graduate Research Development grant from the Graduate Professional Student Association, UNM, 2007. Research, Project, and Travel Grant from the Office of Graduate Studies, UNM, 2006. Sponsorship from New Mexico Public Arts T.I.M.E. Project, Silver City, NM, 2006. Nominated for the Dedalus Foundation Fellowship, 2006. Friends of Art Prize from the University Art Musuem. University of New Mexico, 2005. Undergraduate Dean’s Award for Division of the Arts. University of California, Santa Cruz, 2004.

P u b l i c a t i o n s ( * R e v i e w s ): Cover/Featured Artist in ARTitude Magazine, Issue #26, Winter 2008. Linda Weintraub, “Would You Hire an Eco-Artist?,” Lindaweintraub.com, 2007. Raymond Hernandez-Duran, “Transubstantiation: The Body Alluded in the Sculpture of Jess Dunn,” Donkey Journal, January 2007. ArtSpeak Newsletter, New Mexico Arts, Fall, 2006.