The world’s different now, I’m different now, the work used to come from all around and arc from the energy that surrounded me, into every hair standing on end, a current straight to my brain that would gather and drop to my stomach then rise through my throat, the vibrations pushed not through my vocal chords but out my hands, because no words could carry what my hands would say.

I’ve spent more than twenty five years making art, like pretty seriously making art, more than half my life. I don’t count the years before or maybe even during college, as I’ve been drawing since before I could write. I’m surprised I’m writing this to be honest, an “artist statement”, the fuck is that anyway?? I don’t think any of the artists I’ve aspired to be like in my life would be writing about themselves and their work at this point in their careers, that’s for curators/critics/underlings/ even interns, or they would at least have the decency to write in third person. But here we are, I’m laid up, out of the studio, forcing myself to heal from shoulder surgery, and I guess reflect some, on my work and my life. My mentor from college, Gregg Luginbuhl, said once to me, “only be an artist if you can’t do anything else”, at this point I can say for sure he was right. Though in my own experience, it doesn’t feel at all like a choice. I’ve tried to NOT make art, repeatedly and without success. The reality is that you’re  born an artist, or at least I was, definitely there’s a shit ton of people who CHOOSE to make art and weren’t “born artists”, and hell they’re probably doing way better than me, in terms of success, of stature, of whatever. There’s definitely something to approaching the marketing and sales, of anything really, from a point of emotional disconnectedness, like selling a car or a house or stocks or whatever people sell to make money. The car salesman that feels his soul is literally housed in the quarter panels and the cylinders of his stock, is, let’s be honest, fucking rare, and good luck finding a soul at all in a real estate agent or stockbroker. The disconnect and pragmatism that fosters success in terms of capitalism, I’ve never had. I have made and used art making as an emotional outlet since I was a kid, and continue to work that way, despite knowing it is not a path to success. Foolishly, for many years I believed my work, specifically, could shift social consciousness. I was so blinded by ego, I couldn’t see the futility of the efforts of the most successful, well intentioned artists I admired. For some time after realizing my efforts were wasted, and everything was gonna stay totally fucking fucked, I continued to work hatefully in a similar direction. Unwavering was I in my Sisyphean efforts to cure the world with my art, noble, pure of heart, and willfully lost in my efforts. At many points wondering when I would be acknowledged or heralded for my efforts. This is maybe ten years ago, and at this point smoking weed and being intoxicated in the studio has been my modus operandi since graduate school circa 2004. I’d gone from Ohio to New York, back to Ohio, had a daughter, got married, got a house, got divorced…at points slowing my studio production, but always with one-hitter in hand self-medicating what I would later discover through therapy to be either bipolar 2, or major depressive disorder with anxiety. In late 2013 I had the most important studio visit of my life with Don Bacigalupi, who at the time was the director of Crystal Bridges, a contemporary art museum in Arkansas funded by Alice Walton (Wal-Mart). I was definitely high, and running on about 2 hours of sleep, but the visit was great, Don spent more than an hour with me talking about my work in the house and in my studio. He was traveling all over the country seeking artists from under represented regions, for a show he was calling “State of the Art”. One of the works, All Sinking Ships , a sculpture of a Wal-Mart trailer sinking in an oil spill, I was naturally hesitant to share, but opted for fuck it. Don expressed serious interest in the piece, and assured me of his and the museums autonomy and that “this was just the kind of work” they were looking for, a sentiment he shared the following spring with The New York Times in a multi page feature on the forthcoming exhibit where he describes in detail said piece. However, Don, failed to mention my name or to include me in the show, referring to me only as “an Ohio artist”. I know what you’re thinking, “god, Jefferson’s kind of a lil bitch”, like why share this? or the names and details? Well, I guess cuz its my story and whatever, stop reading then, I don’t give a fuck. AND I’m gonna share more names and facts (as I see and recall them). And these specifics were fulcrums for pivots in my person and my work, which as previously mentioned are inextricably linked. So yeah when you take my work, work I’ve intended to question commercial institutions and consumerism at large, and use it as an example of just how free you are to share works that call into question the corporation that funds your institution, Ima bitch. So as soon as I found out my work and I would not be included, in typical emotional reactionary fashion, I started planning my own exhibition, to rage against Don, Crystal fucking Bridges, The New York Times, Wal-Mart…with a show I would end up calling New American Color. My show would coincide with State of the Art, would include forty artists and performers, a catalogue, a massive venue, an inhumane number of hours, and an adderall addiction that perpetuated what would be the mental break that lead me to therapy. Admittedly its difficult to weave together my story with any sort of clarity, as I was high as shit and so many things at that point were overlapping and interfering and affecting one another. Also sometime between 2017 and 2019 I suffered several mini strokes, in 2020 I did many many hallucinogens and at the end of 2023, my happiest year, I contracted covid 19 for the first time and the spike protiens thrust me into a suicidal depression that rocked me to my core, and changed me forever. I suppose this is as good a point as any to contrast the villains in my story with some heroes. After my divorce in 2012, I, for the first time in many years, found my normally blissfully insular self to be desperately in need of some comradery. That year I met who would become the three closest people to me in the world, fellow artists, misanthropes, maniacs, people who have saved my life in so many ways I could never repay them. In no particular order, Matt Richards, Josh Byers, and Jake Scharbach, are my brothers. They remind me often that no man is an island, that loneliness can be shared, and that art making can be the cause and the cure for insanity. I love them dearly and if you too have the misfortune of being born an artist, I implore you to surround yourself with brothers and sisters who share your creative DNA. It was in conversation with Matt that New American Color was conceived and then manifested. Though I started therapy in 2014 following a severe mental breakdown brought on by NAC, chemical abuse, my simultaneous participation in a museum show, and severe lack of sleep, it would take nearly 10 years and the worst mental break of my life to get sober and get medicated, that’s not to say I am well now, only that my base line has been raised and my suicidal ideation is controlled and sequestered to only brief moments on my darkest days. 

On collaboration; and music, and writing, and visual art, and the distance between them. These practices run parallel and sometimes in tandem but mostly the way we as artists survive ends up quite differently. Musicians more often than not work as a group, creating in a way where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Music is then presented in a way where the length of time the listener is engaged is determined by the artist, the listener pays a small amount for this performance, or pays another amount for a reproduction of the work. Though writing is more often than not a solitary pursuit, again there is a length of time that is somewhat determined and the work can be purchased as a reproduction for a reasonable fee, or even borrowed and consumed for free. Visual artists are uniquely stricken to work alone, often with the notion of individuality and uniqueness being over valued, which leads to a lack of collaboration. Visual art neither requires, nor expects any given amount of time or attention from its viewers. And the works that an artist generates can involve massive amounts of labor and energy requiring individual, unique works to demand high prices, while reproductions only fetch fractions of the originals. I have had several experiences with collaboration as a visual artist. Two of which generated substantial works, each with very different paths and results, but both yielding greater works than each of us could have produced on our own. 

2020 for me started with my mother being diagnosed with what at the time was thought to be a chronic disease, but would turn out to be lethal by the last day of the year. It also turned out to be the year I turned back to ceramics, a medium I had fallen in love with in my early twenties, but like so many young lovers we weren’t ready for one another, and I was distracted and became enamored with so many others. Oh and maybe you remember the pandemic that gripped and halted the world at that time. The beginning of March introduced me to Roxanne Jackson through a mutual friend at a party, in Brooklyn, by the end of March we would be cohabitating, sheltering in place, at my space in Ohio. Over the next six months between my Ohio studio and her New York studio, we would collaborate on a piece, Epic Pandemic Phoenix Too, one of my favorite moments of making, of life, when it was working it was absolutely fucking magic. We did a lot of drugs, a lot of fighting, of fucking, of loving and finally hating. Well, I never hated, though Roxanne did and still does, but the highs and lows were astounding and combined with the loss of my Mother 2020 left me reeling. 2021 would see our piece go on to show at my dream gallery the Hole, in a show curated by Kathy Grayson (dream gallerist), called Nature Morté. A highlight starkly contrasted by Roxanne’s litigious jabs and insistence that I had merely assisted in the creation of the piece and paying me a fraction of what we had agreed upon when the piece sold. All that to say what I  came away with in addition to a renewed disdain and mistrust of the “art world” was a true deep and mature love for ceramics. The twenty or so odd years prior had seen me only commit to the recognizable image. Though I’m not totally monogamous with clay, it feels like something of a primary partner or a safe place to return to, after having spent the last 20 years discovering and inventing new processes and new mediums with nearly each project, it feels like peace. An ancient practice that feels new each time, a place to grow old and live on, a tight rope walk with no net, fragile and indestructible, its just beautiful to me, and for those reasons I will always be grateful to Roxanne. Though if I’m honest that experience as a whole left me feeling gutted and unworthy of a world I had so longed to be acknowledged by. 

2023 was the happiest, best year of my life, I fell madly in love and partnered with someone in a way I never had, I can’t explain it, but to say that when it ended I was incapable of continuing in any way that I had prior to its arrival. This is the point where i finally got sober and accepted the seriousness of my ailing mental illness. The studio and my work feels different now, though it took me better than 6 months to find my footing and feel comfortable again in my art making, I am grateful for everything that brought me to this point. A year ago my thoughts were so dark and my internal monologue so negative that it took almost total intoxication to take the smallest steps forward, by the time my partner bailed I was sicker than I’d ever been and the closest I’ve ever been to ending this life. One day in late February wasted and drowning in sadness with a goodbye note and my pistol in hand my phone chimed with a text from my daughter. That is where my most recent pivot started. I haven’t said much about my daughter here, but she too has saved my life many times and I can’t really express how she has changed my life or how grateful I am for her, but she has been and continues to be my greatest earthly tether. I’ve spent a lot of time feeling bad for where I am as an artist, but having said that, it was always an evaluation in regards to sales, stature, whatever, all the ways I’ve failed. But if I can silence all of that, stop looking outside myself and measuring what I’ve done against a metric that is in reality not a meritocracy, and just acknowledge my growth and continued understanding of my expression through art, I can’t help but be grateful. Being a “successful artist” takes so many different skills that have nothing to do with artistic expression or growth. Finding my own way to honest expression is my success, I can’t sell it, you couldn’t buy it, and no-one can take it from me, it’s just not quantitive. If you read this far I love you.