Jessica Eastburn currently lives and works in Oakland, CA. She received her BA in Liberal Studies from Portland State University and her MFA in Pictorial Art from San Jose State University. She was born in the United States in the early 1980’s, and as such, she witnessed the consumeristic excess of the end of the 20th century as well as the evolution of the rapidly advancing digital technology which has come to dominate and define contemporary life. These factors provide the locus points which Eastburn’s work both responds to and expands upon, conceptually and technically. The advent of this digital technology has inundated people with information, most of it unimportant, trivial, or outright useless. Eastburn’s work mimics this contemporary digital overload by illustrating liminal, arbitrary, and incongruous information, which takes the form of swatches and snippets of patterns and motifs, and layers of pop culture iconography that all overlap and overshadow one another to create a pastiche of ephemeral media flotsam. The information presented in the works is often disparate and random, allowing the viewer to concoct their own narrative with the given images. The process of creating the work is the antithesis of “drag and drop” digital technology, since everything is drawn and painted entirely by hand using antiquated technology such as the ruler and compass to sketch out the works, and gouache (an opaque watercolor), cel-vinyl (for inking cartoons), airbrush and spray paint.
Jessica’s work has been exhibited throughout the Bay Area as well as nationally. She participated in the FISART street art festival in Timisoara, Romania in 2014. She is the recipient of a Creative Activity Grant from Portland State University and the Young Artist Fellowship at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station, CA. She is represented by Empire 7 Studios in San Jose, CA. Her work is also available through Danielle Wohl Art Advisory.
