30th Annual NO DEAD ARTISTS
International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Art"First Saturdays" Opening Reception - 3 October 5-9 PM - in conjunction with ART FOR ARTS' SAKE DOWNTOWN
September 11 – October 24, 2026
Jessie Marie Beals
BackPull Quote
...I attempt to reassert the act of looking as a form of resistance: a recalibration of awareness that reconnects the viewer to the physical, the temporal, and the ever‑present forces shaping reality.
Biography
Jessie Marie is a New Orleans–based visual artist whose practice is rooted in curiosity, perception, and the lifelong impulse to explore the world through movement and observation. Her creative path began in childhood through the performing arts, an outlet that nurtured her imagination and taught her to engage with space, rhythm, and gesture. This early sense of embodied play later transformed into a passion for photography when her grandparents gifted her a camera. During a formative trip to New York City, she became captivated by the city’s architectural lines and geometric forms—an experience that established the act of mindful looking that continues to anchor her work.
Raised in a family that valued inquiry and self-expression, Jessie spent her teenage years investigating philosophy, psychology, and religion as she sought to understand the structures shaping human experience. After briefly pursuing psychology, she shifted fully into visual arts, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in 2004. Jessie paused her emerging career to support her husband’s military service and raise their two children, continuing to channel her creativity through graphic design for nonprofit organizations and designing sets and props for ballet companies.
In 2021, a meaningful conversation with her grandfather—who began sculpting in his eighties—encouraged Jessie to return to her artistic practice. After relocating to New Orleans in 2023, she found renewed inspiration within the city’s vibrant arts community and its spirit of creative exchange. Today, her work investigates the fluid boundary between observation and reality, expanding upon the foundations of her early 2000s practice while reframing them through the lens of lived experience.
Artist Statement
I conduct exploratory fieldwork, surveying both the physical world and my imagined version of the space between perception and presence—an interstitial field where observation meets quantum uncertainty. My process seeks to capture the moment when the waveforms of what we think we see collapse into the particles of what actually surrounds us, revealing the hidden structures of energy and matter that underpin perception itself. In this space, light becomes both subject and instrument, bending through time and consciousness to expose the delicate tension between the measurable and the felt, the empirical and the imagined.
The resulting works emerge as visual evidence of this collapse—photographic and sculptural studies that trace the energetic residue of perception in decline. They reflect the cognitive fatigue induced by our digital ecosystem, where constant visual stimulation erodes attention and distorts the boundaries between authentic seeing and mediated experience. Through these works, I attempt to reassert the act of looking as a form of resistance: a recalibration of awareness that reconnects the viewer to the physical, the temporal, and the ever‑present forces shaping reality.
Cirriculum Vitae
Education
2004 Bachelor of Fine Art in Photography, Corcoran College of Art + Design
Solo Shows
2026 Color Abstraction, Backline Wine & Spirits, New Orleans LA
2025 Interplay, Backline Wine & Spirits’ Exhibition for PhotoNOLA, New Orleans LA
Group Exhibitions
2026 A Little Off Center, Studio Waveland + Gallery, Waveland MS
Alluvium, Scale New Orleans, New Orleans LA
Amazing Black and White. Modern Visual Arts, Bethlehem PA
PushPin Show, New Orleans Photo Alliance, New Orleans LA
2025 Manifest, Forth wall, New Orleans LA
2006 Vastu, Artworks, Washington D.C.
2005 Art in Transition, Pop-Up Gallery, Takoma Park MD
2004 Kalorama Artist Fair, Kalorama Women’s Center, Washington D.C.
Art-O-Matic, Washington D.C.
Annual Gala, District of Columbia Chamber of Commerce, Washington D.C.
Snap to Grid, Los Angeles Center for the Digital Arts, Los Angeles CA
BFA Senior Thesis, Hemicycle at the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington D.C.
2002 Go!, Pop-Up gallery, Washington D.C.
Juried Arts Markets
2024 Left Bank Arts Market, New Orleans LA
2021 Carlsbad Village Faire, Carlsbad CA
Awards & Honors
2026 Experimental Photography Series Nominee, Fine Art Photography Awards
2004 Senior Faculty Award, Corcoran College of Art + Design
2001 Dean’s Scholarship, Corcoran College of Art + Design