Biography

Jessica Naples Grilli is an artist, designer, writer and collector living in Columbus, Ohio. She was born in Fremont, California and raised in the rust belt town of Youngstown, Ohio. She received a BS from Kent State University in 2009 and a MFA from The Ohio State University in 2014. Her work explores the space between image and language, specifically that of photography and poetry.  In addition to her own creative work, she spends her time digging around the archives as an image researcher and designer at the Ohio History Connection.

Artist Statement

We are afraid to forget and to be forgotten: we collect, catalog and archive so that we may know what came before and that we might be remembered. Our lives are built on this premise; whether for show or for sentiment, much can be said about the things we keep.

We don’t save unwanted things. We rid our homes of the old, the used, the unnecessary. We bury our embarrassments. We keep tokens, souvenirs or mementos of significant events and past experiences. While memory is slippery, unstable and fragile– these objects are concrete presences of the past.

I am interested in the relation between physical things, the social and personal memories they contain, the words we use to name them and the snapshots that serve as their record. My material is found in these images, descriptions, and display–and in them, is the recall of our lives.