January 2024

Jessica Campbell

Portrait of Jessica Campbell by Carlos Avendaño

Natalie Varbedian speaks with the multidisciplinary artist about Heterodoxy, her latest exhibition at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia.

Jessica Campbell is an artist and author working in comics, fibers, painting, drawing, and performance. Drawing on a wide range of influences, including science fiction, art world politics, and her evangelical upbringing, Campbell explores ways to reflect heterogeneity through a combination of disparate media, subjects, and tone. Whether through cartoony depictions or the use of unorthodox material, her work often wields humor as a device to help one come to terms with its darker subject matter.

Please tell me about your artistic background.

I did my undergrad (Concordia) and MFA (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) in painting and drawing, but it was during grad school that I started to work in lots of different disciplines like comics, fibers, performance, et cetera. Now, my work is truly interdisciplinary and changes media depending on the demands of a particular project or where my interests lie. However, certain themes recur in almost all of the work: the cartoon, which I think of as the distillation of life into an eminently readable, iconographic form; humor, which is the lens through which I view the world and is a way of making trauma bearable; craft, which is historically devalued, often functional and anti-hegemonic; interdisciplinarity, which I see as communicating some of the heterogeneity of the experience of being alive; and, I suppose, history or historical references. There are many other personal interests and references that appear in a recurring way, but these are the major themes and interests that have been with me throughout my career.

Installation view, Heterodoxy, 2023. Jessica Campbell in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Photo by Carlos Avendaño

You create comics and textile installations. Do these exist as separate practices for you, or do they ever intertwine?

I have made a concerted effort in some exhibitions to relate the comics and textile/carpet works together. In my Chicago Works exhibition at the MCA in Chicago in 2018/19, I produced a room-sized mural featuring carpet panels that acted somewhat like comics panels, or, at least, their Renaissance forebears (like Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel). The exhibition at The Fabric Workshop (FWM) is focused on a debate club called Heterodoxy, which featured two cartoonist members (Lou Rogers and Ida Sedgwick Proper), which is how I became interested in the group.

However, I believe that comics (i.e., linear narrative forms) and studio art or fine art communicate in fundamentally different ways and that a gap between them can never be fully bridged. For instance, in my comics work, I often want to be relatively clear and direct with the narrative or humor while leaving some room for the audience’s own interpretations and experiences in longer work. Still, I think to be so clear and direct in an exhibition would quickly become didactic and tedious. For an exhibition to work (for me), there must be a kind of magic combination of visceral/material experience, conceptual strength, and personal interpretation.

Ultimately, however, a lot of what I love about art of all kinds is that it says something about what it feels like to be alive; it’s a way of processing the world and experience, and I think this applies equally to comics, art exhibitions, dance, film, etc.

Installation view, Heterodoxy, 2023. Jessica Campbell in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Photo by Carlos Avendaño

How did you connect with The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia for this project? What has the experience been like developing the exhibition?

I was asked to do this show by The Fabric Workshop’s former curator, Karen Patterson, who is now the executive director of Ruth Foundation for the Arts (and is wonderful). Honestly, the entire experience has been an absolute dream come true! FWM has a unique program that entails artists being in residence over long periods and collaborating with studio staff to produce new works that transcend what they could make in our studios.

Can you talk about your interest in exploring the intersection of feminism and subculture in the context of your overall body of work and this exhibition?

What an interesting question! I guess I haven’t considered my work in terms of subculture before, but I can see that as an accurate descriptor. I wonder a little bit if subculture even exists today, as all of my students and younger people I meet today seem to have communities of people interested in very niche and esoteric topics, and there no longer seems to be a clear dominant culture. But I digress.

I was raised in a very conservative evangelical church that imposed the idea that women should be subservient to men and were, essentially, not full human beings. This, combined with being a woman in the world, saddened me and, later, angered me. I do not believe one group of people is better than any other. We (human beings) should share our resources so that we can all thrive. I believe in reparations. I believe in investigating history to highlight marginalized groups intentionally neglected from the canon. Part of how this has manifested in my work is often through research-based projects that address women’s history, as that has been marginalized in various ways. In Joanna Russ’ book How to Suppress Women’s Writing, she talks about this idea of women writers being “neither mothers nor daughters,” i.e., that they neither took influence from their women ancestors nor had any subsequent influence. She identifies this as one of the more pernicious ways that patriarchy suppresses women’s work. By researching historical women’s work (particularly in cartooning/the arts), I am partly hoping to rectify some of this historicity. Plus, I’m a nerd who likes looking at old newspaper archives for fun!

Installation view, Heterodoxy, 2023. Jessica Campbell in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Photo by Carlos Avendaño

“I believe in investigating history to highlight marginalized groups intentionally neglected from the canon. Part of how this has manifested in my work is often through research-based projects that address women’s history, as that has been marginalized in various ways.”

How were you first introduced to the Heterodoxy group? What led you to incorporate so much of their history into your art?

I learned about the group first from Jill Lepore’s book The Secret History of Wonder Woman, which is an absolutely fascinating and amazingly well-researched (not surprising if you know Lepore’s work!!) book on William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman. In it, she talks about the work of suffrage cartoonist Lou Rogers, whose drawings were some of the original models for Wonder Woman (cribbed by her colleague/early WW cartoonist H.G. Peter). In the book, she briefly mentions this secret debate club Rogers was a part of, and the idea blew my mind. Early twentieth-century female cartoonists are almost invariably written about as if they were producing work in a vacuum, as anomalies in their fields who were usually the only women contributing cartoons to a newspaper or magazine. I suppose the implication for me was that many of them predominantly associated with men and were primarily motivated by breaking into male-dominated fields (as was nearly every professional field). So discovering that Rogers was meeting up with other women regularly to debate ideas of the day was totally mind-blowing for me. The fact that it was an interdisciplinary and SECRET debate club also made it very enticing to research.

Installation view, Heterodoxy, 2023. Jessica Campbell in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Photo by Carlos Avendaño

Your work is multifaceted in theme and medium. What was your thought process when choosing to work with vibrant textiles to display such powerful messages?

I definitely think there is a balance of intellectual framing and, like, lizard-brain decisions in my work, haha. I first started using carpets as an accessory in my drawing and painting installations and became fascinated by them. I don’t really like carpet. I find it off-putting in my own home. But I found that it produced a visceral reaction, and I liked that strong reaction. For this exhibition, the dominant visual/material component will be the tufted walls, which are being produced by FWM and whose designs are based on the work of Amy Mali Hicks, the (as far as I’m aware) sole textile artist in Heterodoxy. I want the environment to feel immersive and somewhat oppressive and to reference the early twentieth-century anarchist restaurant, Polly’s, where members would meet up for their debates. I say oppressive because I think there is something very physical and overwhelming about being surrounded by carpeted walls, in the same way that intense patterning can feel overwhelming and all-consuming. This interplay between beauty, the decorative, the feminine and intense feelings of overwhelm or submersion fascinates me. I think I have a fraught relationship with femininity in general, and being suffocated by ultra-feminine flowers and textiles, beautiful in small doses but potentially claustrophobic in large ones, feels apropos. I believe many of the members of Heterodoxy had a similarly complex relationship to gender.

Exhibition process, Heterodoxy, 2023. Jessica Campbell in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia.

Exhibition process, 2023. Jessica Campbell in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia.

Exhibition process, Heterodoxy, 2023. Jessica Campbell in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia.

“A lot of what I love about art of all kinds is that it says something about what it feels like to be alive; it’s a way of processing the world and experience, and I think this applies equally to comics, art exhibitions, dance, film, etc.”

How has Heterodoxy’s development impacted how you go about your art? Are you working on any new projects you can tell us about?

This is the largest and most comprehensive research-based project I have worked on. I think part of what is compelling to me about it is that we plan on organizing a series of lectures and discussions related to the group’s interests (those of which are still relevant today, at least) and thinking about programming as a part of the exhibition and not merely ancillary to it is new for me. I love talking, listening, and meeting people and would love to continue to work in a way that allows me to bring more voices into my work in various capacities. Likewise, collaborating with The Fabric Workshop on producing the work has been a new experience. Part of it involves ceding some control, which can be frightening (I am used to being a dictator in the studio), but it has allowed me/us to produce work that I never could have on my own, which is thrilling.

In terms of new projects, mostly there are just germinations of ideas. I am conceiving a book project that will accompany Heterodoxy now that the show has opened. Otherwise, there are two things I’m thinking about:

1) In December, one of my oldest and closest friends, Lee McClure, died suddenly and unexpectedly in December 2022, and I am totally heartbroken about it. I recently made a comic for MoMA about him and his death, and I would like to write more about him and ultimately print something. I am also working on a monograph/collection of Lee’s artwork and comics alongside his brother Renny McClure and best friend Neal Rockwell.

2) I will be doing a residency at SPACES in Cleveland this year, and my proposal was to make art that will only exist in people’s dreams. During lockdown, I was attempting to meet up with some of my friends who were far afield in our dreams at night (it never worked), which got me interested in dreaming and the idea that we might be able to influence or manipulate our own dreams. I am also interested in making artwork that is truly ephemeral and cannot be bought or sold, so the idea that the “real” artwork would exist only in your dream appeals to me greatly. Perhaps it’s like an anti-NFT: good for the environment, accessible to everyone, worthless (in terms of fiscal capital). How this will manifest is still quite nebulous, but I’d like to begin by attempting to manipulate my dreams and then eventually set up some kind of sleep clinic. Time will tell!

Jessica Campbell
Heterodoxy
The Fabric Workshop and Museum
Philadelphia
October 6, 2023—June 2, 2024

Jessica Campbell
@jessica_campbell_art

The Fabric Workshop and Museum
@fabricworkshop

Natalie Verbadien
@nataliev1

Jessica Campbell is the author of three graphic novels, including RAVE (Drawn and Quarterly, 2022), Hot or Not: 20th Century Male Artists (Koyama Press, 2016), and XTC69 (Koyama Press, 2018). Her comics have appeared in The New Yorker, Hyperallergic, and the Nib, among other publications. Her Chicago Works show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2018–2019) was reviewed in Art in America, Hyperallergic, and Juxtapoz. Other solo and two-person exhibitions include Field Projects, New York (2019); Roots & Culture, Chicago (2015), and La Galerie Laroche/Joncas, Montreal (2012–2013). Her work has been included in group shows at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI (2022); The Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (2022); Richard Heller, Los Angeles (2019); the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario (2019); the ICA, Baltimore (2018); Monique Meloche, Chicago (2017); and was included in Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2021). She is represented by Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL.

Natalie Varbedian is dedicated to examining changing conceptions of art and the disciplines of art history. She received her MA in art history from UC Davis while working as a teaching and research assistant. She has collaborated on exhibitions with several institutions, including the Bakersfield Museum of Art and the Fresno Museum. Natalie lives and works in Los Angeles, and her recent exhibition, Discovering Takouhi, is on view at the Armenian Museum of America in Boston.