Jessica Jones: DEAR PHILIPSBURG
“The objects left behind signify stories that passersby may or may know, their colors and shapes at the mercy of the elements.”
Summer II 2024 Artist-in-Residence in Philipsburg, MT
Jessica Jones at a Welcome Party hosted by the Philipsburg Arts Fund.
What role does place (both in terms of physical space and community) play in your work, especially during your time at Open AIR.
A sense of place is integral to my work as a writer and artist. I grew up in Northern Appalachia with strong connections to the land and later studied place-based and Indigenous education at the University of Montana. I currently am on full-time faculty at Kent State University, where many of the courses that I teach also center on place and place-based identity. My poetry chapbook, Bitterroot, is set on the Flathead Indian Reservation where I taught for a number of years, and my current projects continue to explore issues such as sustainability and land-related culture. The residency in Philipsburg helped me to further frame my understanding of Montana—particularly how copper and silver mining affected towns and cities like Philipsburg.
I took many walks while in Philipsburg (and also in Butte) during my residency. The buildings, alleys, relics and in-between spaces of both towns reveal fascinating layers. Each town offered up past iterations of itself that were particularly alluring at dawn and dusk amid shifting light. The photo below, "Granite County Ghosts," was taken on one of my morning walks in Philipsburg and speaks to the lives that were suddenly halted when mining jobs disappeared. The objects left behind signify stories that passersby may or may know, their colors and shapes at the mercy of the elements.
“Granite County Ghosts,” © 2024 Jessica Jones
Other photos that I took, such as the one below, “Butte Alley with Bicyclist,” have become the subject of ekphrastic poems in which I explore the layers of city walls, murals, graffiti, light, and shadow as living palimpsests.
“Butte Alley with Bicyclist,” © 2024 Jessica Jones.
Since finishing the residency, I have continued to fine tune poems that I worked on during Open AIR. Recently, five of these were selected by Poets for Science and are viewable on the website below. “Ghost Flight at Berkely Pit” was inspired by a trip that my Open AIR Cohort took to the copper mines; “Exocoetidae” was something I began before Open AIR but found resolution for in conversations with my cohort. The three others in this online gallery each found completion during my residency as I visited the sites that had originally inspired their content.
Open AIR Artists-in-Residence at the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives in Butte, MT.
Describe your Open AIR Residency experience. For example, how did you spend your time, construct your space, or engage with the community?
I served as writer-in-residence in Philipsburg during the July-August session. While there, I interfaced with the community in a variety of ways: 1) I led two writing workshops at the library for adults and one for teens, 2) I taught children at the local elementary school during their art camp, and 3) I created and oversaw a community poem platform called “Dear Philipsburg,” where locals could upload their memories, photos and poems about the town. In addition to this community project, I worked on my own photography and poetry whenever possible, taking walks and capturing what I saw to come back to later. I’ve since worked into a few of these pieces, editing the photographs and drafting ekphrastic poems that speak to the layers of history in Butte, Philipsburg, and the surrounding areas.
Jessica taught Art Camp with the kids in Philipsburg: a workshop to create their “Dear Philipsburg” collages and upload them to Jessica’s Open AIR community poem web page.
What are you up to now (post Open AIR)?
After returning home, I was honored to celebrate the publication of a recent poem in a book put out by Kent State University Press called Light Enters the Grove: Exploring the Cuyahoga Valley National Park Through Poetry. I was involved with this project prior to joining Open AIR but feel that Open AIR furthered my awareness of how the arts can work in tandem with local communities towards efforts such as environmental sustainability. This book—an anthology of poetry and printmaking by Ohio artists and writers— is particularly close to my heart having spent a year as writer-in-residence in the national park in 2007-2008. It’s been a delight to help host events surrounding the book launch and to integrate some of the things I learned at Open AIR into my dialogues with readers and audience members. Sometimes I think that spending time away from home helps us understand our own creative processes better, and that is definitely the case with Open AIR.
Jessica Jones and Nancy Fitch at Orientation at the Philipsburg School.
What was one of your favorite experiences of the Open AIR Residency?
One of my favorite things about the Open AIR program was working with the other artists in residence and with the directors. It was inspiring to hear how each of them worked, to witness their processes (both the internal creative process of conception as well as the material process of working toward a product). I looked forward to our weekly cohort zooms and thoroughly enjoyed the sense of camaraderie we shared at events like the summer conference (a major highlight!), our welcome trainings, and meeting up for the Butte Folk Fest. Everyone’s laughter, kindness, and intellectual vigor was wonderfully refreshing each time we met. At the end of summer many of us did trades and exchanged contacts to stay in touch for future collaborations.
Click to treat yourself to Jessica reading her poems!
