Jaymee Harvey Willms Artist

So.... Whew... We are hitting the end if my third semester in grad school- and it's been a whirlwind. I am finding out I am glad this is a three year program and not anything less- not sure I could have done it in two... I wanted to show you an installation from a guerrilla show we did on campus in the sculpture building. This was a group show with some of my favorite pals, we have to come to call our artist collective the Bootgang. I used the opportunity to make the largest installation I have made to date. This apparently does not mean the best- bigger isn't always better. Critiques of this piece have mostly been about superficial confusion. Much talk has been about prop making, micro and macro understanding of my own narrative. Basically, I didn't give the viewers enough to dig into, but they were impressed by scale and ambition. This is not exactly what an artist wants to hear, but it is a learning point.  So without and further ado, the best learning expe...

Some of you may remember the paintings from my last "781" post... Comments on them ranged from sadness, laughter, and thoughts about rap lyrics. In reality, the language was in reference to my body; said by my coworkers. As an artist I do not feel it is my job to point fingers, but instead call attention. In the calling to the forefront of thought, it is cathartic for me to get rid of the jumble of words that bouncing around my head that has been thrown at me. Whether or not we want to talk about it sexual harassment has long term effects on the recipient. The chairs are a stand in for the human. A viewer can understand them in shape, form, weight, and use. The words that were spoken are scared, stitched, and burnt into the chairs themselves- almost as a violation of their natural state, a way of defacing their surface. I tried to repeat the words said to me in ways that would either make them irrelevant or unrecognizable to their original meaning. For example, spending t...

For  long time I have been messing around with poetry and the way language functions as an art form. I do not believe this is profound, but here are a few word banks that I have been operating from. These two are about specific pieces and processes that have been posted already so as to not repeat myself no images today! childhood, faith,  narrative, mess, head,  heart,  home, sex, gender, history, narrative, story, femininity, responsibility, grass, story, family, fear boogie man,  story, fear,  growing,  graffiti,  discard,  knitting,  weaving,  belonging,  fairy tale, dirt,  stains,  history,  sleep,  sex,  thread,  tail,  trail,  body,  destruction I believe with all that I am that breaking down the wall between artist and viewer is at the center of making good art. So I hope that as I continue...

Lovely way of describing my process I know... I had and have a wonderful mentor and friend who once told me that my strength was in my absorption and fairly rapid "regurgitation." I am sure that Ari said it more elegantly than that, but you get the picture. So, in the constant stimulus, ebb and flow of living I have come full circle at the end of my first year in grad school. The newer things you will see on this post seem to be the summation of things learned in New York. Warning: some of these images have a slightly sensitive nature- in that they deal with sexual harassment, female identity, and body image. I give you a warning only because my work has centered around play and production and construction of identity- so these things may seem vulgar. And indeed they are- the small paintings contain short phrases that men have said to me since moving to the east coast. As for the rest- some writing about them will follow later this week!

I look a lot at instagram, twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and reddit to find images and stories that inspire me. Being able to use contemporary/pop media is very important to me and critical in my research. These are a few screen shots that focus on fashion, design, and all sorts of cool schtuff!

This is a body of work that will be described in the paragraphs below is in major progress. These photos were from a class called Topics in Sculpture: aka 781. I am currently working on a few project proposals to try and get into circulation again. Below are a series of paintings and the proposal that goes with them. Trigger Trigger  is an exhibition that requires the viewer to look at the immense issue of gun control. Often the issue of gun control is broken down to legalities and paper work. Recently to call for mental health screenings and limits dominate the conversation. Trigger examines a feminist perspective of the issue. Created in easily understood graphics and with non-mature materials the paintings focus on masculinity versus femininity and the role that gender conditioning has in the use of guns and weapons as a whole. The juxtaposition of the graphic, even comic, style of the images of the guns is ...