THE ZAZZLE REVIEW: SAY HELLO TO ZAZZLER JESSICA IN SEATTLE

Monday, March 21, 2011

SAY HELLO TO ZAZZLER JESSICA IN SEATTLE

Jessica Christian moved to Seattle almost 14 years ago with her growing family. That move was her motivation to name her first store ‘Jessica in Seattle’ when she started on Zazzle over three years ago. Since then she has added three more stores to her group and found that life seems to always present new ideas for new designs.

Sticky Kids by JessicaInSeattle

Jessica’s four children range in age from four years old to early twenties. She finds that being exposed to this age range provides her with a vast perspective on what is in style. She says they spark her imagination and her life with positive energy and this is reflected in her art. The love and support of her fiancé also inspires her and she feels abundantly lucky to have such a wonderful family and inspiration.

I have a secret... by JessicaInSeattle

Jess’s hobbies include sketching, painting, playing the flute, learning to play the piano, fixing anything from a faulty wire to a sagging hinge, refurbishing furniture, running and taking photographs while she is out running through the beautiful City of Seattle.

Run Like You Love It! by JessicaInSeattle

Unlike many artists, Jessica did not start drawing or painting as a small child. She has never taken an art class and she never really thought of herself as an artist until very recently. Jessica dabbled with chalk pastels when she was eighteen, did her first sketch when she was nineteen and then she didn’t do another one until she was in her early thirties. A couple of years ago art truly caught Jessica’s fancy when she started sketching, and her oldest daughter took her to an art store to get some ‘real art supplies’. The rest is history.

Eye See You by JessicaInSeattle

Jessica says that her style varies so vastly that she doesn’t believe that she really has one. Writing has been a passion since Jess was young and many of her designs are just words, so the writer in her comes out in her work. Jessica also works with photographs; digital art; charcoal; tempera, oil, watercolor and acrylic paints; her trusty no. 2 pencil, white pencils, colored pencils, crayons and oil pastels. She says that her hands are usually covered in whatever medium she is using. Recently Jessica purchased Photoshop and began learning how to use it.

Space Needle and EMP by JessicaInSeattle

Life, children, love and nature are all inspirations for Jessica. She has a list of ideas so long it could circle her house several times over. Her children inspire her almost every day and some of her photographs have her children in them. Nature is a huge inspiration for Jessica. Many of her photographs are of places she has visited in her travels to the Caribbean, Costa Rica, ocean areas of the west coast of the United States and right in her beautiful city of Seattle.

Sea Shells by JessicaInSeattle

Jessica has no formal artistic education but when she can’t get something worked out quite to her liking she has used YouTube videos a bit to look up techniques.

Lightning Creation by Onomonopia

None of Jessica’s art has ever been displayed in a gallery and she doesn’t even know if that is one of her aspirations for her career. She has never given it a thought before.

Psychedelic Flowers by JessicaInSeattle

Recently, Jessica opened a new store on Zazzle and her art took a more ‘psychedelic’ turn from anything she had worked on before. These works are purely digital and are available in her store 'Vicodin Dreams'. Creating these twists, turns and what she supposes could be called fractals in her art has been incredibly exciting.

Inside the Machine by VicodinDreams

In recent weeks Jessica has been learning how to use Photoshop and she has made good progress with it. She is planning to create more digital art. She also has an incredible backlog of photographs she plans to add to her main store ‘Jessica in Seattle’ very soon. She is also absolutely loving altering her photographs into something that is unrecognizable as the original piece and expects to do more of that as well.

Creation by VicodinDreams

Jessica’s support and involvement in the LGBT community also inspires her to create new designs that incorporate rainbow themes and messages in support of this community. As well, Jess has been close to many people who have experienced breast cancer and that drives her efforts to create designs to raise awareness and support for this issue. Every year Jessica donates 50% of the proceeds from all of her ‘Pink Ribbon’ products. The donations go to the University of Washington Tumour Vaccine Group, which is an industry leader in the search for a cure for breast cancer. They are part of a very large team of researchers in Puget Sound and globally. Sales of these products and therefore donations have grown exponentially over the past three years and this fires Jessica to continue to create more ‘Pink Ribbon’ products.

I support gay rights by JessicaInSeattle

Jessica’s art is available exclusively in her Zazzle stores on almost all of Zazzle’s available products. The selection of products continues to grow as Jessica creates new and exciting designs and as Zazzle adds more products. Original art is available for sale on request.