Jessi Cross is a painter, printmaker, and art therapist working in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She attained her BFA in Printmaking from the Maine College of Art in 2000. Raised by an artist in rural Maine, she made art when not in the forest, attended life drawing classes in high school, and was involved in public arts projects and gallery events in Maine from adolescence to her mid twenties. Peppered through this time were odd jobs such as mess mate on wooden schooners, seamstress at a mattress factory, weaver, movie theater attendant, waitress, landscaper, muralist, and community art teacher.
Since 2003 Cross has lived in New Mexico, and she focuses in this desert and mountain landscape on painting with gouache and ink, drawing, and block printing. She was part of the studio artist community at the Harwood Art Center in Albuquerque 2009 to 2012. She has shown in community and gallery settings over the course of her career and has engaged in community murals in both Maine and New Mexico. Cross is a recipient of the 2023 Artist Grant on Water and Scarcity through the City of Santa Fe, New Mexico resulting in a solo exhibition and several talks about her process with the project.
Cross is deeply passionate about this earth and humans remembering their place here as emerging from and being a part of the Earth. She reads voraciously, with recent books including:
The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
The Flowering Wand by Sophie Strand
Women Who Fly by Serenity Young
Staying with the Trouble by Donna J. Haraway
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
ART MOZAIK
SANTA FE, NM
March 2024 Art Unleashed Juried Group Exhibit
LIGHT ART SPACE
SILVER CITY, NM
Oct 2023 H2O Shifting Currents Juried Group Printmaking Exhibit
SANTA FE WATERSHED ASSOCIATION
SANTA FE, NM
May-July 2023 Solo Exhibit of Works for Art is the Solution Artist Grant City of Santa Fe Arts Commission
SANTA FE PUBLIC LIBRARY SOUTHSIDE BRANCH
SANTA FE, NM
January 2023 Magic of the Mountains & High Desert Solo Exhibit
SÍ GALLERY
AUSTIN, TX
Aug – September 2022 Art in the Time of Corona | Vol 2
MARIPOSA GALLERY
ALBUQUERQUE, NM
Feb 2022 - current Prints of artwork for sale
WILDHEART GALLERY SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE
SANTA FE, NM
March 2022 Solo faculty exhibit of recent work.
DAB ART GALLERY
LOS ANGELES, CA
September 2021 - current Art in the Time of Corona |Vol 2 online juried group exhibit https://www.artsy.net/artwork/jessi-cross-earth-breathing