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Jessica Andrea Cruz

b. 1995 Irvine, California, USA

Preferred pronouns: She, her, hers

2018 BFA Painting & Printmaking Virginia Commonwealth University

Solo Shows:

Fall Potluck, Corner Office, Richmond, VA, May 2018

Not Paintings, VCUarts Fine Arts Building, Richmond, VA , April 2018

The Greatest Burnout, VALET, Richmond VA, March-April 2018

Like Penelope, not Tom, Gallery 283, VCUQ, Doha, Qatar April 2017

Group Shows:

The Other Side, The Anderson Gallery, Richmond, VA Sept 2018

Fifty Shades of Gatorade, Siegel Center, Richmond, VA May 2018

Business Casual: VCUarts Painting & Printmaking Senior Show, Main Street Station, Richmond, VA April-May 2018

I Dreamt I Went to an Art Show, The Depot, VCUarts, Richmond, VA April 2018

Sloppy Fruit Pt.1&2, VCUarts Fine Arts Building, Richmond, VA Dec 2017

Wet Paint, Workhouse Arts Center, Lorton, VA May-Aug 2017

Emerge, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA June-July 2017

VCU Cabell Library, Student Showcase, Big Screen, Richmond, VA Dec. 2016

Delicious Vocabulary, Current, Richmond VA, Nov. 2016

VCU Cabell Library, Student Showcase, Big Screen, Richmond, VA Oct 2016

MOCA Open (C)all Exhibition, Virginia Beach, VA May-Aug 2015

VCUarts AFO Curation Club: Refraction, Richmond, VA Oct-Dec 2014

Awards:

2017-18 VMFA Undergraduate Fellow, Painting

Press:

Inspired Works lead to VMFA Fellowships for VCU Students and Faculty, VCU News, Feb. 2017

Artist Statement                           Last updated 4/11/18

 

My practice as an artist encompasses everything that I do daily. Everything that I encounter is fair game for inspiring work that reflects how I have reacted to the present world around me. Recently, these encounters have manifested themselves as printed emails of rejection letters, handwritten journal entries on newsprint, short stories about our ephemeral lives and video work that explores spaces and dreams using ripped audio of Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Inception. A painter by nature, I am drawn to the colorfully soft sides of our personalities, bodies, and minds. It is in the falling of my own assumptions and boundaries that my work lives. I am always a work in progress. I seek to intimately relay my own experiences as a growing human with a lighthearted body of creative and challenging work that reflects me and grows with me. It is my hope that whoever may interact with my work reflects on what it means to present one’s innermost thoughts for everyone- for the public to consume, pass by, or transform. I strive to vulnerable so that I may better take in what is around me and present it with the most thought, care, and humor.

 Right now I am…

9/23/18

I am residing in Virginia Beach, VA. I am applying for part time/flexible full time work while I prepare to apply for Navy OCS to become a US Navy Officer. It is a long process that I have given plenty of thought to and I am just beginning.