People of Rochester - J.J.

I met J.J. at the Lucky Flea Market, last summer, where she was selling her unique collage art. She had a distinct look—colorful, striking, covered with tattoos, retro-style mirror shades, lots of earrings, rings on almost every finger, vivid stick-on nails, and (at that time) a vibrant, fuchsia section in her blunt bangs, with fuchsia highlights in her shoulder-length hair (the fuchsia has since been replaced with hot green). Then there’s her Instagram feed, which is mostly images of her collage creations, interspersed with pictures of herself, or parts of her body, that show off her tattoos.

Recently, I contacted J.J. to see if she’d be willing to let me write a blog post about her. She graciously invited me to her home studio, where I asked questions about her work, appearance, and creative process.

I was surprised to learn that she’s an HR professional for a local Target store. In her job, J.J. recruits people and does a lot of staffing. She schedules over 160 people, including leaders, on a weekly basis, and she’s a liaison between the people who work on the floor everyday and upper management in and out of the store.

One of her favorite things to do is facilitate new-hire orientations. On their first day she gets to tell new employees why she enjoys working for Target, why it’s an interesting company for her. “I have an alternative look, and I feel I wouldn't be able to do this HR position in a lot of other corporate cultures,” she said. “I don't think the way that I look should take away from anything I've accomplished, or will accomplish.”

When she got her first tattoo, J.J. had already visualized herself as being covered with tattoos. When she was a child, she would draw an outline of a person that she would fill with color, using crayons. And she thought, if there was a way to make her body colorful, that’s what she would do.

She got her first tattoo on her 18th birthday. It was “Japanese orchids on my back,” she said. “It goes across my shoulders and all the way down.”

J.J. said the experience of getting tattooed was torture, and when she first finished a session, she thought, I'm never going to do this again, but shortly after that, she wanted to get another tattoo.

Every three weeks, for years, she would get a new tattoo, and she was constantly healing in different parts of her body. J.J. spent most of her money on tattoos. 

She got to a point, 10 years in, where she only saw the blank spaces. “And then, it’s a different problem,” she said. “Instead of thinking, oh, I would really like to have a tattoo here, you're like, ‘Oh my god! I have this blank space right here. What can I fit there? Who can I talk to to put something right there (in the blank space), it bothers me so much.’”

Now she only has blank space in her armpits and on part of her sides, and “I am so disinterested in getting tattooed anymore,” she said. “You couldn’t pay me to get a tattoo right now.”

She’s been a collage artist since 2009. The first collages she made were to practice for the “zines” that she made. She had just graduated from college and started working at Target. She didn't drink and didn't know how to go out and make friends. She didn't want to go to a bar and make drinking friends, who would just be drinking.

The concept for her zines was that she would include a self-addressed stamped envelope (to a PO box she had) on the back of the zine. The idea was that people would send her content (raw materials) that she would then cut and put together and mail the zine back to them.

The first ones she made was all her own media, and she left them at coffee shops and gave them out at art events. That’s how she started to meet people. She told them she was making “this thing” (a zine), and requested that they send her pieces of themselves. They would send her old photographs, grocery lists, receipts, birthday cards, or stuff that they had found. One time someone sent her a tooth. 

While she was waiting for people to send her raw materials, (“I wouldn't get a lot, maybe sometimes two or three letters a week, or so.”), J.J. would get books or magazines and rip out random pages, and because she wasn’t sure what people would be sending to her, she would practice by taking the weirdest content she could find and trying to put it together into a composition. 

For awhile, she offered her creations at zine fairs, where she would include pieces of collage art, framed or unframed. She discovered that folks tended to gravitate toward her collage art instead of the zines. She found this odd at first, but she started making pieces of collage based on her impressions of people she knew and giving them the artwork.

That’s how J.J. started to make friends. She would bring her raw materials to Boulder Coffee and make collage art in the coffee shop, which she would share with other patrons… “I need to make stuff, and you're sitting in front of me, so I made this for you,” she said. She didn't expect anything in return.

After a couple years of making zines, she put them on the back burner and started making collage art full time. At that point she was living in Rochester and had become part of an art community, who believed in her and liked her creations.

Now she does solo shows in places she used to visit when she first came to Rochester. And she’s friends with people she admired when she first moved here. It’s “super-cool how this thing gave me an in to make the friends that I was always destined to make, I suppose.”

Her creative process involves finding and cutting out raw materials, which she stores in binders. She collects content and organizes it in a way that makes sense to her. Then, she thinks about what pieces go together, finds a background, and creates a collage. 

More recently, she’s been working on 3D domes, which are basically dioramas. She wants to expand the way people think about collage, because she’s inspired by artists of other mediums, like painters, for example: “I can’t paint to save my life,” she said, “but I find the process of painting so cathartic, and watching someone be good at something is inspiring to me… People who can make jewelry—it blows my mind! That they’re able to use their hands in a way to create a thing that folks are able to wear.” 

She wants to bring a kind of mysticism to collage art, where when people look at it, she wants them to think it’s fake. She wants people to think, oh, that was made with a computer. Or, when she makes those 3D domes, she wants to people to think, well, this isn’t what collage is.

“We should be pushing all boundaries within the art world, within reason, because none of us should fit politely into a box. That’s not what we’re doing here,” she said. 

“And it’s the same thing with my body and all the art I put on it. I don't want to fit politely into anybody’s box. I got these tattoos because I love them and this is how I imagined myself as a child: being a powerful woman, but also as kind of a big middle finger to (conservative/traditional) society, because if you're not ready to look like this and take some flak, then don't do it.”

“I understood the assignment when this was happening that I would have to have a personality that was either very accepting or very mean. And I went the other way (being accepting). I'm open to having conversations with people, even if they start out being rude to me. I'm like, ’Let’s unpack that.’”  

“You can't be a person who’s mild-mannered and look like this,” she said.

If, by “mild-mannered,” J.J. means modest or docile, then I agree… she’s not a modest person.

Thank you, J.J.!