A COLLAGED LIFE

Jessica Carter, a mixed media collage artist, is making strides within Ocala’s art community while also preparing for a major change in her teaching career.

// BY MELISSA PETERSON

Jessica Carter has been a teacher for 26 years. She’s taught everything from reading to math and science to kindergartners and rst-, second- and third-graders at Dr. NH Jones Elementary, as well as in Seminole County. This school year, however, she has taken on a new role: art teacher at West Port High School.

As an artist herself, the change isn’t a huge leap for Jessica.

“My success as a teacher is not based on what I teach each day,” says Jessica, “but rather the relationships I build with the students. I am honored to be a part of their journey.” Her experience as an artist has undoubtedly led to this shift in her teaching journey. After taking a collage workshop in 2010, she immediately fell in love with collage art. However, at that time, her son was 2 and she had two older children, leaving her no time for creating art. She eventually picked it back up in 2019, when her O’Lily Down Art Studio was born.

“Moving to Ocala in 2016, I immediately gravitated to downtown, Marion Cultural Alliance, the Appleton Museum, the MAX and the First Friday Art Walk,” says Jessica. “I loved attending the openings and seeing all the art. I would show up at events as a spectator, not knowing anyone, and it continued that way until 2019. [A friend] encouraged me to apply for FAFO’s emerging artist program, to which I was accepted and went on to create 25 pieces in ve months. I was working 12- to 18-hour days to meet this deadline as an elementary teacher and artist. This art form is labor intensive, and I average 20 to 100 hours per piece.”

Her art focuses on hand-painted, handtorn, found papers along with a wide variety of textured and patterned paper. The process involves sketching a design and transferring it to a cradled wooden panel, painting the composition on the panel using acrylic paint, painting the papers to match the color and adding texture and patterns, ripping and tearing tiny paper pieces and adhering them according to the design and, nally, sealing the piece with varnish.

“The process is layered as deeply as the painting itself,” explains Jessica.

The paper used for her collages comes to her in a variety of ways, many times from “extinct” items, like maps, atlases, dictionaries, wallpaper and books.

“These things are all easily found online and at everyone’s ngertips, leaving these artifacts to fall by the wayside,” says Jessica. “I collect them up whenever I come across them or always accept them when given to me by friends. If I am creating a commission for a client, I am able to include personal memorabilia and themes that represent their loved ones or art piece that they share with me.”

While her ideas often come from nature, she nds pleasure in putting together things you would not typically expect.

“Exploring colors and veering away from what is expected in nature has been my latest exploration,” she says. “Expect the unexpected is what I think as I begin creating my next piece.”

Her work has now hung at Art House Ocala, Marion Cultural Alliance and NOMA Gallery, and she was featured in Artistry in Motion on Gainesville’s PBS and NPR stations. Currently, her piece titled “Summer Lovin’” was chosen by jury and is hanging at NOMA Gallery through the end of August, and she will have art at both MCA’s Brick City Center for the Arts and NOMA Gallery in the coming months. She also plans to show at FAFO’s Ocala Arts Festival in 2022.

“Although I have always considered myself clever and talented, I would not have said, ‘I am an artist,’” says Jessica. “I come from a long line of artisans and feel genetically I have the ability to accomplish many things. I think my greatest strength is that I am not afraid to try things and usually do not quit until I have mastered what I set out to accomplish. I have worked diligently for the past two years and wear the title ‘artist’ with honor today.”

Jessica Carter // You can see Jessica Carter’s work on Instagram and Facebook by following @o.lilydownart.