Search A:LIST
Hyde Park Art Center
The HPAC is the oldest alternative exhibition space in the City and boasts a long record
of education outreach in the community.
› Find out more...
4833 rph
If A:List is an online space to explore and connect with art and artists, then 4833 rph is our home base.
In a blending of exhibitions and education, 4833 serves as a gathering place, resource, archive, and
program space located at the new Hyde Park Art Center.
› Find out more...
Jessi T. Walsh
Artist Information
Born: 1974, Sarasota, FL
Currently Resides: Chicago, IL Humboldt Park
Contact Information:
jessitwalsh (at) gmail (dot) com
Website: www.misscomfort.com
Medium(s) Worked in:
Sculpture
Metalwork
Photography
Film/Video
Performance
Conceptual
Mixed-media
Audio/sound
Installation
Interdisciplinary
Artist CV:
Download file
Available for Commission: Yes
Represented by:
The artist
HPAC Exhibitions
2007, Constellation: Faculty Exhibition, Live Performance: “As Deep as She is Tall: A Peepshow in 3 Acts.”
2006, Material Science Faculty Exhibition
2005, Remnants: Works in Sugar Invitational
Artist Statement
I am captivated by the body; our internal biologies, scars and missteps, the sociological nature of the body politick whether female or male, the sculptural forms created by the body, noticed moreso in choreographed stillness and economy of movement. Our bodies are constant maps of experience and experiment and are more telling than we may like to admit: the public gaze meets our private histories through the surfaces of our skin. My sculpture, photographs and drawings throughout the years cannot escape the body’s influence: fleshy forms of architectural impressions are molded in heavy white sugar paste, corporeal monochrome stills hover in a grainy, dissected narrative and a twisted charcoal smudge of viscera connects the landmarks of our inner workings. Currently, I am in the throes of discovering links between my tradition of creating tactile visual art objects and their conceptual incorporation into a staged personal narrative. How does the visual interpretation of the human structure inform work made in a time-based domain?
How can a broader commonality be discovered in a gender- and peepshow-specific one-woman show?
In presenting my Grotesques, which are contained Southern-Gothic-infused burlesques I generally perform as a swampy, love-and-war-torn creature named Miss Comfort, I am investigating how our bodies manually labor to create meaning or uselessness. I bring attention to the manner in which our physicalities respond to task, whether rote, ridiculous or both, and how our collective experiences in (blue-collared) work become a connecting thread between us. Performed in the construct of an ever-reinvented peepshow, I am displaying inimitable, absurd, humorous, self-imposed tasks of performing toil without force through Miss Comfort’s quiet grace. In the tease of these Sisyphean undertakings, the traditional burlesque reveal is transformed as we witness Miss Comfort finally resting atop her efforts. Although the piece has ended, the cyclical nature of the act lingers and the audience is left wondering if this task will begin anew even when they are not present.
My community interest stems from my pedagogy as a teaching artist: art is for everyone. It is integral to my process to perform without exclusivity or in expected venues; rather, I desire to offer inclusive opportunity to an audience which extends beyond the arts-minded crowd or my personal mailing list. I find new ways to bring my performances to the people, wherever they may be in their own routine, by making work which comments on our private curiosities in public, our desire to bear witness and our want to integrate ourselves into a larger phenomenon, with or without human intimacy. A major premise of a Miss Comfort Grotesque is to engage the audience into the performance itself. As audience, we watch the eyes of others ingest the performed act across a circular peepshow curtain; we stare at the floor during a peepshow veiled only by the outing of a light bulb, momentarily very conscious of our complicity in the piece; we throw catcalls or birdcalls in response to Miss Comfort’s movements and she tosses a shoulder back at us, smiling.
Artist Bio
Born in the sand of a Gulf Coast Florida town in 1974, Jessi T. Walsh expected she would become a marine biologist until the unsatisfactory mark she received in the class at Florida State University gently urged her to rethink that path. Being raised by two artist parents did not deter her from jumping right into earning a BFA in Studio Art at FSU in 1996 and, from there, she promptly moved to Austin, Texas. In Austin, Ms. Walsh began regularly showing her drawings, photographs, and mixed-media sculptures and installations at local galleries and venues. It was here that she also began her work as a Teaching Artist, a practice she happily continues since moving to
Chicago in 2003. Ms. Walsh teaches performance and visual studies in the public school system with the Hyde Park Art Center, CAPE (Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education) and other arts organizations. In the Interdisciplinary Arts Graduate Program at Columbia College, she embarked upon seriously pursuing her natural theatrics as intentional performative endeavours. Having excused herself from grad school in 2007, Ms. Walsh now looks forward to spreading the entropy to the masses in two current large-scale projects which will showcase her work in Super8 film, sound, movement, live installation and video.
Press & Publications
*ArtStyle Blog, “Jessi T. Walsh’s Entertaining Miss Comfort”
*Illinois Creates, “Arts at the Core” (Specific Mention on page 11)
*Illinois Arts Alliance, “Arts Education: Trends in Public Policy Development and Implementation” (Specific Mention on page 63)
*The Austin Chronicle, “Outside the Box,” by Robert Faires
* “Outside the Box” - The Austin Chronicle
* Community Calendar - CBS 2 Chicago
* Now Showing - The Chicago Reader
* Art Openings - The Austin Chronicle