SPOTLIGHT
Jessica Earley
by Jessica Pirani
Jessica Earley paints with a broad palette. The thirty-something
emerged into Orlando’s art scene in 2008 through puppetry
and parade with the arts and music production group,
Bread and Circuses. As if for a lark, Earley threw a
solo parade commemorating her 10,000 days living
with 10,000 steps. She walked the five-mile course
mostly alone -though the public was invited- while
airing relevant songs and recordings from her
journal. Effusing a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, this cortège in reverse served to celebrate
her life while also underscoring an essential
sprightliness.
More Than Meets the Eye, embroidery on fabric framed.
Photo by Mariana Mora
A wellspring of Earley’s drawings and paintings has continuously bubbled up over the
years, processing women’s issues. These
evolving collections are seasoned with subtitles, and are unafraid of slippery wordplay,
through which she plays up clever tangents
grazing innuendo, raw emotion, and seductive insight to caption her deeply feminine
imagery. She explains, “I was consumed by
these feelings about wanting to become a
mother, so I’m assuming it was hormonal,
and I wanted to express it through my art because there’s a catharsis to that.”
Generously peppered among her steady material
output, Earley has created a number of video art
pieces using digital media and Super 8 film. “I used
to try to capture little moments; everyday things that
come across as special or significant to me,” she said of
her enchantingly ambient and moody videos, which are
viewable in her collection under the username “Bunnihop”
on YouTube.
She considers her most ambitious piece yet to be Hyper-bolic, a 45-minute long spot of performance art she put on at The Venue a couple years
ago. “It was in response to a breakup that completely destroyed me.
When I was going through it all, everybody said I’d make such great art
from it, and it sucked to hear at the time, but they were right, and I feel
really proud of it… It was hard for me because of social anxiety, and I
got teary [in the midst] because it was so difficult to do and so personal.”
This radiant star in our local art scene projects herself in the not so distant future making more video which fuses puppetry and performance.
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You can see more at:
JessicaJaneEarley.weebly.com
www.ARTBORNEMAGAZINE.com