Jennifer Mead

Jennifer Mead
Tucson, Arizona, USA

STATEMENT

Years ago, before I went back to school for graphic design, someone saw creativity in me and pointed it out. In doing so, they changed the course of my life and career. Once I found my way to design school I found my passion for making things and communicating visually. Graphic design is communicating a very specific message, on behalf of a client to a targeted audience, and I love the challenge of problem solving that it brings. In all of that, I never thought of myself as an artist. To me, an artist is someone who makes art for its own sake, for their own sake, and that is so very different from design. Only recently have I found my own rhythm as an artist in creating collages and mixed media pieces.

Through many moves and over many years I have carried with me a large vintage suitcase filled with magazine covers (yes, only the covers) that were saved by my great-great-uncle, himself a commercial artist, back in the 1930s. After my grandfather passed, this stack of ephemera came to me. It is amazing that my family kept them; it is amazing that I kept them. I never knew what to do with them, until now. Repurposing these remnants from my familial past seems like it was meant to be. I use cut-outs from this magazine collection along with other similar era magazines and ephemera layered with acrylic paints to explore my own creative perspective. Common themes in my collages include vintage style, surrealism, absurdity, and female experience.

BIO

Jennifer Mead is a career art director and graphic designer with over 12 years of experience. She is passionate about visual communication and building a creative community in Tucson, AZ where she resides. As a graphic designer, her work has won awards including Student Addy Awards, and multiple industry awards for her web design work. Foundational fine art courses in her Bachelor of Arts Graphic Design program at the Southwest University of Visual Arts sparked Mead’s interest in hands-on creation that extends beyond the primarily digital and computer based design work in her day job. Mead uses collage as a creative outlet to bring her eye for design layout, color and unique perspective into a tangible visual form. In her recent work, she enjoys exploring themes of surrealism, absurdity, vintage style, memory, and female experience.

ARTIST CONTACT

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jennifermeadcreative.com

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