Hello! I’m Jes Sweat, an artist and art educator based in Brooklyn. I have two cats named Lucy and Lima who are almost two years old. I am originally from rural California, but I’ve been in NYC for eight years. I’m a big fan of CUNY schools–I did my undergrad at the Hunter BFA program, and am currently with the wonderful community at CCNY getting a master’s degree in Art Education. I am so grateful for everything I have learned during my time here, and how the professors at CCNY have expanded my ideas of what education can be.
My artistic practice is character-based 2D, 3D, and video work. During my time as an undergrad, I was lucky to collaborate with other students in videos and performances. After the lockdown in 2020, I moved on to digital drawing and painting, and have been making work like this ever since. Feel free to check out my work at https://www.instagram.com/human.insect/ or https://vimeo.com/jessweat.
My introduction to artmaking was through fan art, fan sites on Geocities and Angelfire, and fan art communities such as DeviantArt. I remember carefully tracing characters from Sailor Moon on my huge 1990s PC screen. Memories like this come to mind when I think about what it means to teach art to young people. My suspicion is that they already have unique artistic practices but have not been given permission to explore them in the classroom.
My thesis is an exploration of the art that children already make. I personally was bored to tears in art class during my K-12 education, and I have seen many schools where not much has changed. My goal is to help students feel confident in their artistic practice and in their lives, which means trusting their creative vision and decision-making. To gain some insight into the art that young people are already making, I have decided to embark on a journey of studying the early lives of contemporary artists. I am choosing to interview a variety of contemporary artists who make character-based work because this work is already in conversation with young people who, like me, are drawn to character-based work as well. How old is this phenomenon of adolescent character-making? Does it influence who becomes an artist and who doesn’t? How do artists who work this way describe their relationship with the characters they make? What can we learn from the childhood art practices of contemporary artists?
Some pages to peruse:
https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2020/11/17/cute-contemporary-art
https://www.artforum.com/slant/alexandro-segade-on-the-year-in-mutants-56445
