Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Esther Brown.
Hi, Jennifer Esther; please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My first art, piano, began at age 4. I was scared of the dark, and my dad, a successful composer and music producer, would sit me down in front of our stand-up piano in a darkened room and teach me how to play. I didn’t have any sheet music. It all came from our hearts. I was born with a congenital disability, and we didn’t know it was there until I was seven years old. Drawing, writing, and music became the thing that kept me connected. I never felt like I could express myself verbally, but music and art were how I communicated what was inside of me. I never felt like I chose the arts. They chose me. I don’t know how not to create. It’s compulsory, and so is sharing creativity with others.
As a pre-teen, life was complicated, and illustrating, piano, and creative writing became my constants. They were also how I gained recognition and felt understood. More than anything it was a way how to not to keep all the intense emotions bottled up. By early high school, I began exploring oil painting and took my drawings to the next level using inks and watercolor. By the time I graduated high school, I won a piano performance scholarship and used the funds for fine art classes in college. My dad wanted me to continue with music, but I had made my choice.
A lot happened in that time. I continued with the arts until I was 22 years old, and then it all came to a screeching halt. After five years of not doing any art, I finally picked it back up, and it has stuck with me since. After getting married at 29 and having a second child, I became a stay-at-home parent. We moved into a little ranch house with an extra room for a large art studio. Home alone every day caring for my baby and the house, it was very lonely. So one day, I put my son in his stroller, and we walked around the corner to the community center where I offered to give oil painting classes for free. I just wanted to be around people and do what I love. Sure enough, they were having a seniors class that day. They said the center didn’t allow them to use oil paints because of the fumes. I told them about my studio and said we could oil paint there. Four individuals in their 70s and 80s attended my free oil painting workshop in my home studio, and we ended up completing all original renditions of their favorite paintings.
Well! After a few months of this, we had an incredible body of work. Before this, I’d never been in a significant exhibit or represented by anyone or any firm artistically, but my oil painting students’ works compelled me! I opened up the phone book, this was back in 1999 when we still used phone books, and I called every single gallery starting from the letter ‘A.’ They all rejected me until I got to the letter ‘U.’
Danita Beck from the Urban Arts Commission in Memphis, TN, said she wanted to come out to my studio to take a look and so she did. After seeing all the work, she took all of the paintings with her and put them in an exhibit at Shelby County Board of Commissions Executive Suite for two years! That landed me on the Memphis art map. From there, I landed exhibit after exhibit with solo shows and collaborative endeavors. I also got involved with mentoring and doing beautification projects together with surrounding communities.
One thing led to another and before I knew it, I was set up to meet Claudio Perez Leon (owner and CEO) to interview for a mural position at Art Impact. This company was currently installing a 17,000 square foot mural at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in addition to other large-scale projects around the city. After two interviews, I was hired. After obtaining my engineering badge, and becaming part of the Art Impact team, I worked 5-6 days a week, 8-10 hours a day, painting murals at Le Bonheur and St Jude Childrens Research Hospitals. My son was only a year old then, and eventually, I left that position to be home more with my young son. It was one of the most challenging decisions I had ever made.
Significant changes came about as I approached 40 years old, and my then-husband and 9-year-old son moved to Maui for the next 10 years. I divorced after being there a year and returned to school to earn my A.A.S. in B-tech and B.A. in Psyche. One semester, they didn’t have any of the classes needed toward graduating credit, so financial aid allowed me to take anything I wanted that semester. That is how I discovered clay for the very first time. Taking my first pottery clay class ever, I knew from the moment I walked into the studio that this art form would take over my entire life, and it has. That was nine years ago.
Eventually, I had to leave Maui and move to the Nashville area where my family lived when life threw me a hard curveball of major medical disaster. After receiving the medical care I needed, I have recently been able to start rebuilding my life professionally, spiritually, socially and creatively. Meeting a scientist from Knoxville, after a year and a half of dating, I moved into his West Knoxville home where together we’ve created a beautiful climate-controlled pottery studio where I now teach, mentor, and produce prolifically.
As I’ve been able to throw myself back into my art aspirations it has been a very happy and exciting journey getting to network and connect by teaching at my home studio as well as participating as a vendor at markets and festivals where I was also hired to guest teach for the kids art program. Additionally, I was just hired at Knoxville Museum of Art to teach children’s clay and illustration classes this summer as well as at The Appalachian Arts Center in Clinton, Tennessee.
In addition, and most importantly, my passion is working with special education. My studio is accessible, and the skills sets and knowledge I gained while completing my psychology degree are applicable in everything I do, including with the arts. I am currently working on researching grants and grant writing as I have lofty ambitions of funding a project that would allow me to go into every Knox County Special Education Classroom and bring clay art as well as other creative activities. I’ve visited Oak Ridge High School Special Education class several times with clay art, music, and other tie-dye art fun. What a fantastic opportunity for those young kids and their care providers. Lastly, I wrote a 270,000-word movie (and other projects) while recovering from several surgeries. Producing movies has become my greatest and most challenging passion and have put together a 4-6 movie deal I’d like to pitch to one of the streaming platforms. I’m just brimming with ideas and ambitions! I play guitar, ukulele, and piano, and I am learning the mandolin. I love to write poetry and stories and will include one here. I paint murals. I make stoneware utilitarian and aesthetic arts. I oil paint. I love to mentor, teach, and have a lot of patience with people’s individual processes.
Love will wait
It prays and dreams
It listens, it knows
It’s seen things
Love is blind
It can slip right through your hands
So be mindful of love
That’s what it demands
Love isn’t looking away
Love is why we stay
Sometimes, it’s by mistake
Sometimes, the last breath we take
Would it have been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I’ve had 48 surgeries in my life and more struggles than the average person, I would imagine. Shattered bones, transplants, suprapubic catheters, and more! But of all my accomplishments and ambitions, at this juncture, my greatest is to make movies that have significantly positive impacts. I have many stories to tell, but in them, all, what I care most about showing people is how to take even the worst situation and find the good in it because in life, there’s a little bit of bad in the best and a little bit of best in the worst. Attitude is key. After almost dying from a childhood birth defect, and after misdiagnosis with a family who couldn’t ‘cope’ with my pain and my situation, I had to dig deep with my 18-year-old son who supported us both to survive. There are a lot of details to that story, and getting to the other side didn’t come without consequences. I have chronic issues I face every day, but each morning, I wake up with a prayer in my heart. Gratitude and helping others are the secret to happiness. It really is that simple.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a clay artist, teaching all ages in my home studio. I have also been hired and recruited to guest teach in various places. I love practical work and am proficient on the wheel, and my specialty is color. If I had to label myself artistically (which is difficult as I’m a multi-genre artist), I’d say that I’m a ‘colorist.’ I paint the world with music, words, and color. Oil painting and murals are areas that I also have much experience with, and I’ve participated in both volunteer and stipend community partnerships to beautify and culturally connect with people from all backgrounds, neighborhoods and districts.
My first scholarship was for piano, but I’m also a guitarist and ukulele instrumentalist and am currently learning mandolin. I’m most proud of my mural work at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the communities I’ve made a difference in through the arts having put together my own mural company and being able to hire and pay another artist to help me with my project. Creating jobs for other artists is a passion.
What sets me apart is that I am happy to go above and beyond to make a good experience an outstanding one. I’m like that with everything I do. I’d rather overextend myself than look back and think, I could have done this or that and didn’t. When I teach or mentor a child or adult, I prefer not to put limits on them and aim to be an encouraging and inspiring art educator. I also look different and at times look like the art itself. The arts isn’t compartmentalized in my world. There is art in everything I do. Whether it’s a flowing scarf in my hair or temporary face tattoos, I have a strong sense of style. I also practice inclusivity. People who are challenged can easily find themselves comfortable around me. I have a lot of patience. I’m a smiley person, but I know how to take certain situations and people seriously. I also know how and when to be upbeat and lighthearted and approach life and people with optimism and enthusiasm.
Can you talk to us about the role of luck?
Aaaah, luck. I have one of those lives with the best and worst luck a person can have. It’s not a level playing field. Some of us are just better at everything than others. They have good genes, a healthy family, and the opportunities they didn’t waste. But not all successful people are making a bee-line to the finish line of success. Most of us, including my own personal growth, have learned through error. Mistakes are how we learn, yet they are time, energy and money-consuming. But, there is no need to judge ours or others’ process. It’s a learning curve, and different for everyone. If you wake up daily and love what you do, that is success. Is it lucky to have that kind of attitude? Probably. Although luck has a say in how life unfolds, I’m also an opportunist. I know an open door when I see one. Treat all your ideas as royalty, for one may be queen. Failing isn’t so much about luck; it is about showing up every day and not giving up. There is only one surefire way to fail: and that’s to not to try. I’ll never stp trying.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.seesthrutrees.com
- Instagram: seesthrutrees
- Facebook: seesthrutrees Jennifer Esther Brown
- Other: www.xsfxdesigns.com
