She totally kilns it
Jessica Ames Russell is an artist and educator who has lived here in Eureka Springs for 30 years.
“My grandparents were close with Louis and Elsie Freund,” she said. “That’s why we moved down here, because my grandparents lived down here. The young people, at that time, were Mary Springer, Doug Stowe and John Willer. They would just meet at each other’s houses.”
Jessica’s dad was the Eureka Springs art teacher, a role Jessica took over upon his retirement. “He was my art teacher from K-12,” she said. “He had the whole district. And back then he didn’t even have an art room in the elementary school. He had a cart he would roll down the hallways.
“I remember attending guild meetings in the high school art room or going to Mary Springer and John Willer’s place out at Hogscald. I just remember them having a blast. Being full of life and energy and creativity. It was a very cool environment to grow up in.”
Jessica’s mom also taught art, but in Berryville. “I tried to get out of art,” Jessica laughed, “but I just couldn’t. It drew me back in. So, I ended up graduating and getting a BFA with an emphasis on painting and photography. I never set out to be a teacher. I grew up with two teachers and I saw how hard they worked, how relentless it was.”
Jessica took over for her dad in 2008, when he retired, and was the art teacher for grades 8-12 at Eureka Springs High School for 15 years.
“It was amazing,” she said. “Professionally, it was the hardest thing I had ever done and the most rewarding. One of the reasons I loved teaching is it taught me all kinds of art.”
Jessica also ran the high school Art Club. The Arts Council and the Art Club would do a community project around town each year for the May Festival of the Arts. The first such project was the rainbow waterfall staircase. Sandy Martin connected Jessica with nationally acclaimed local muralist, Doug Myerscough, for the project. The kids from the Art Club came up with designs and helped Doug paint the stairs.
The Art Club painted and installed the panels on the Art Wall next to the Native Plant Garden downtown, where a vision of Bernie Sanders driving a VW bus still lives on. The Art Club also designed four different compositions that spoke to the health of our water systems, encompassing their cleanliness and our conservancy. These are painted on manhole covers around town.
“The whole school environment changed a lot over those fifteen years, and I felt burned out,” Jessica said. “I know how important that profession is. Those kids need really amazing, dedicated teachers. I felt I didn’t have what I need to give anymore. I felt spent. I didn’t want to stay in that position and not be able to give them one hundred percent. It seemed like a time I needed to say goodbye to it.”
Jessica said that teaching was the best learning experience of her life. “I learned more being a teacher than I ever did being a student. My university professor convinced me that I was worthless in the painting realm. I took a workshop with Jody Stephenson at ESSA,L and she changed my life. I’ve been painting again ever since. She was phenomenal. An inspiration; kind and instructive. All the good things. Jody awoke in me something that was gone for a while, in terms of painting.”
She founded her own studio in 2021, LongView Studios. She also started an art party business called A Splash of Color. “I was building these businesses and any money I made off of those went straight into savings, so I could have a cushion. I saved up for five to six years. Just to allow myself to get out on my own and do this artist thing. It was time for a change.”
Jessica has been a full-time artist for three years and just completed a winter residency at ESSA. “The high school used to let me do my professional development at ESSA. After I left teaching at the high school, I started teaching at ESSA. I’ve been teaching regular ceramics workshops out there.
“I always wanted to do a residency. Getting a good fellowship or residency is a big part of becoming an established artist.”
The residency lasted six weeks and allowed Jessica to find her artistic statement and what really spoke to her. The first part of her residency she focused on perfecting wheel-throwing forms and creating a motif.
“I chose to focus on developing my wheel throwing forms. I found my artistic form. I’m so excited. It came to me in the middle of my residency, this circle motif. I’m seeing this motif and I’m questioning it in my mind, ‘Is this silly? Does this make sense? Does it work?’ So, I just started trying it. I approach it in different ways, depending on what firing method I’m using.”
The second part of her residency, she focused on different firing processes, specifically raku and a variety of sagger. Raku is a form of firing that comes from Japan.
Jessica makes her own glazes, which requires developing her knowledge of chemistry. She loads a gas kiln and fires it up to 1830°. When it reaches that, she shuts the gas off and opens it up. She removes the pieces when they are glowing red hot and puts them in a nest of combustible material in a barrel that she puts a lid on.
“You have this fire raging inside,” she explained. “Then you put the lid on, which starves that fire of oxygen and reduces its environment. All these chemical components of glaze react to this reduction.”
Her favorite firing process is sagger, basically firing ceramics in a container. A sagger can be made out of all sorts of things. “I’ve used aluminum foil, paper clay and popcorn tins for some. Put rock salts, all sorts of oxides, banana peels, cornhusks, and many other chemically combustible materials. You decorate a piece and then put it in sagger. It’s so fun!
“That residency created a love for those experimental firing practices for me. That and murals are my focus right now. The majority of my life I have been a painter way more than a potter. But the last two years, ceramics has just really drawn me in. I’ve only been painting murals and commissions.”
On Thursday, May 29, from 4-6 p.m., Jessica will be unveiling a new mural she has completed for The Arts Council at the Native Plant Garden off N. Main St, to officially close this year’s May Festival of the Arts.
She painted the mural on panels, due to the unfit condition of the retaining wall they are installed on. She used an exterior latex-based paint and an UVLA varnish to protect against sun and weather damage.
Ginny Poe will be playing music to accompany a native plant giveaway.
Jessica can be found at longviewstudios.com, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.