Meredith Allen at Edward Thorp Gallery

This is Jess in a nutshell: sincere literalism colliding with arch semiotics and giving off rare alchemical heat.

I had Kiki Smith over when I had just finished these and she said, You know, you should approach some galleries from a revisionist point of view because usually it’s a male in the studio with a model, or a male at the easel, and here you’re a nude figure in your own studio with all your paintings and your tools around you. There aren’t many paintings like that, she said. So I thought, well that’s interesting, that’s not something I was thinking about—I was thinking about what I feel in my studio, the vulnerability.