Jessica R. HendersonArtist / Designer / Educator

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Born in the 80’s, Henderson has lived two distinct lives. Her childhood and high school years were, for the most part, pre-internet. The iPhone was introduced in 2007 as she graduated college; heavily tethering the second half of her life to a smartphone and social media. Henderson has a lot of questions about the ways these tools and devices have formed/are forming her as she finds herself continuously navigating the tensions that they seem to create. The smartphone certainly provides many benefits, but it also entices one to consume, placate discomfort with distraction, and resist the limitations of time and space. These activities often feel in direct competition with the deeper and more complicated longings of her soul— to contribute to the world through thoughtful creation, attentiveness, and lean into the limitations of embodiment. With the ever-increasing pace of technological advancement, it is essential that  we critically evaluate how personhood is continually shaped and re-shaped by the adoption of each new tool and device.

Henderson works through these questions and tensions in her artmaking practice. Viewing her computer and phone as a digital archeological dig-site of sorts, these repositories are culled for photos, screenshots, texts and other source imagery that become autobiographical evidence and documentation of everyday life. Through abstracting, combining, documenting, distorting, re-processing, duplicating, and recombining these elements a visual language emerges that mirrors the endlessly regenerating behavior of technology itself. The work is primarily two-dimensional; utilizing digital and handmade processes like vinyl cutting, CNC routing, digital printing and screen printing in ways that are densely layered. Sparkly, metallic, reflective, slick surfaces are punctuated with dimensional interruptions, distortions and handmade marks that embody analog/digital tensions. 

Look, Look, There is Something.
October 2024
Walford Galleries, Wheaton College
Wheaton, Illinois


Solo exhibition comprised of 4 projects/series.

Look, Look, There is Something
Multi-dimensional installation spanning two walls: 15.5’ and 19’ long by 12’ high. Vinyl decals, custom-printed fabric, iron-on decals, upholstry foam, plywood, nature treasures.

Muchness & Manyness; Being Lived Elsewhere; We will Never Be Bored Again; A Foot in Several Worlds; A Very Deep Encounter
Printed fabric, iron-on decals, MDF, polyfill
25.5”x35.5”

A Phone, A Rock, A Tool, A Toy
Interactive collaborative project; blank CNC routed MDF “phones” decorated by friends and exhibition visitors
120+ phones; 3” x 6”

Alive & Clicking; Can’t Decide if I Like This; Couldn’t Load Image; Now What?
Letterpress prints, digital prints, vinyl decals
18”x24”

Finish This?; How Many Hours; This World is Not Real Life; Unsure Face; SO REALLLLL
Digital prints, vinyl decals
18” x 24”
“I can give into the distortions of the world, treating you as a project or as a subject-in-making for the empire of global capitalism. I can try to assimilate your play to my functionality. Turn all your toys into objects that make you grow smarter and more talented, or will distract you so that I can work. I can make my logic of work an all-encompassing logic that governs your world. Or I can try to yield to your way of play. Let it transform my work and reconnect me to a self that exceeds any function or goal.” - Natalie Cranes, Motherhood: A Confession

“Because our present habit of mind is governed by the calculus of consumerism and busyness, we are less frequently available to the exuberance of beauty.” - John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

“Yet one of the hallmarks of the Great Rewiring is that children and adolescents now spend far less time outside, and when they are outside, they are often looking at or thinking about their phones. If they encounter something beautiful, such as sunlight reflected on water, or cherry blossoms wafting on gentle spring breezes, their first instinct is to take a photograph or video, perhaps to post somewhere. Few are open to losing themselves in the moment…” - Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation




Small booklet accompanying the show can be viewed here.

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Deeply Placed Exhibition Book
Spring 2024Design by Jessica Henderson in collaboration with Karen Brummund and Elisabeth Pellathy

6x9”, 74 p. with clear duralar dust jacket and custom stickers.

This book is an extension of the Deeply Placed Exhibition that took place at Samford University in February 2024 and was made possible thanks to a grant from Alabama State Council on the Arts. It includes essays considering what it means to be deeply placed in an ever-shifting world through a variety of interdisciplinary lenses. 

Essays and visual content by Karen Brummund, Jennifer Allen Craft, Lauren Frances Evans, Jessica Henderson, Brett Levine, Jared Margulies, Elisabeth Pellathy, Claire Thompson, and Felicia Wu Song.

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Ethics of The Dust Book Project
Spring 2024Concept by Lex Thompson. Design by Jessica Henderson and Lex Thompson. Serigraph covers by Jeff Wetzig.
Eleven saddle stitched booklets in slipcase, 10 x 6.75 x 1.25”, 174 p., 11 image plates, edition of 50.

View the complete project and learn more about History-Papers at lexthompson.com

Description and photo documentation courtesy of https://www.lexthompson.com/books/the-ethics-of-the-dust “Published by History-Papers, John Ruskin’s The Ethics of the Dust is a dialogue, teaching ethics and aesthetics under the guise of crystallography – joining science and the humanities. The ten lectures are housed in individual volumes, each with a silkscreened cover. An introductory volume contains a new introduction by Ella Mershon, Ruskin’s front matter from the second edition (1875), and photographs by Lex Thompson of minerals made in museum period rooms. The text is set in two alternating columns to emphasize the structure of the dialogue with a format resembling text message exchanges.”

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Deeply Placed Exhibition
Winter 2024Samford University
Birmingham, Alabama
Additional Programming:

• Friday, Jan. 26 at 9:15 a.m. - Seminar in the Art Gallery with guest theologian, Dr. Jennifer Allen Craft - Exploring the Tensions of Place Through Theology and the Arts
• Thursday, Feb. 15 at 1 p.m. - Seminar in the Art Gallery with guest sociologist, Dr. Felicia Wu Song - Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age

What does it mean to be present when the life we live moves untethered between a physical and digital universe? New works by artists, Karen Brummund (Tuscaloosa, Ala.), Jessica Henderson (Minneapolis, Minn.), and Elisabeth Pellathy (Birmingham, Ala.), observe and draw these two parts of our life, tracing the footprints we leave. Using digital tools like video, laser cutters, and 3D scanners and printers, these artists extend the art of mark making and move past the surface in more ways than one.  

Text from https://www.samford.edu/arts/events/Deeply-Placed

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New Work
Summer 2023 Digital prints, acrylic, cut vinyl
25 x 19

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Look Am I Solo Exhibition
Fall 2023

• Northwestern College
• Orange City, Iowa

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Bethel University Art + Design Department Faculty Exhibition
Fall 2023

• Bethel University
  
• St. Paul, Minnesota

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All the Kids and All Their Phones
Summer 2023 CNC routed MDF, paint markers, pencil, acrylic sticks, neighborhood kids ages 3+