Born in California, Jessica Fenlon was raised in Wisconsin. While a student in a conservatory of music, she survived a 6-month-long death experience due to medical malpractice, in 1991. At the end of this experience, unable to play violin, she took up meditation practice. In 1995 she chose to study art, enrolling at the University of Wisconsin.
After completing her MFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2002, she moved to Pittsburgh, PA. She developed her visual language by putting work in front of audience whenever possible. This included in collaborative theatrical (& pseudo-theatrical) work with choreographers, bands, and literary performances. She created large scale installations in Pittsburgh’s 2004 and 2010 Three Rivers Arts Festivals.
As curator, she hosted informal screenings of artist-made videos as Viewer Discretion from 2006-2009. This work became the Post-Apocalyptic Movie Theater, a movable installation artwork, in an April 2009 show in Braddock, PA & then Polish Hill in 2010.
Her first book of poetry, Spiritual Side Effects, was published in late 2008 by Pittsburgh’s 6 Gallery Press. She acted as principle designer and web publisher of literary magazine The New Yinzer from 2008-2010, assisting at their literary events as a video designer/projectionist and performer.
In late 2010, she moved to Chicago, IL.
Check out the list of events, publications, and performances here.
She is a complex synaesthete. If you have the chance to meet her, you might notice the earplugs. Her hearing is acutely sensitive. Additionally, she experiences sounds others perceive as normal volume to be painfully loud, a phenomenon called ‘recursion’.
Her meditation practice is rooted in mindfulness meditation, and includes prayer without ceasing, tonglen, chöd, mandala creation, mantra, zen, and awkward yoga.
artist’s blog, snowblood’s parasol : youTube channel : vimeo channel : flickr sketchbook : tumblr blog : facebook artist’s page