Jess Collins (August 6, 1923 – January 2, 2004), simply known today as Jess, was an American visual artist.

Biography

Jess was born Burgess Franklin Collins in

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

. He was drafted into the military and worked on the production of

plutonium Plutonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is a silvery-gray actinide metal that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four ...

for the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

. After his discharge in 1946, Jess worked at the Hanford Atomic Energy Project in

Richland, Washington Richland () is a city in Benton County, Washington, United States. It is located in southeastern Washington at the confluence of the Yakima River, Yakima and the Columbia River, Columbia Rivers. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was ...

, and painted in his spare time, but his dismay at the threat of

atomic weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear expl ...

s led him to abandon his scientific career and focus on his art. In 1949, Jess enrolled in the California School of the Arts (now the

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a Private college, private art school, college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mis ...

) and, after breaking with his family, began referring to himself simply as "Jess". In the late 1940s, Jess met Robert Duncan and the painter Lyn Brockway, and became active in numerous exhibitions, poetry gatherings, and creative endeavors through their circle. He met Robert Duncan in 1951 and began a relationship with the poet that lasted for 37 years until Duncan's death in 1988. In 1952, in San Francisco, Jess, with Duncan and painter Harry Jacobus, opened the King Ubu Gallery, which became an important venue for alternative art and which remained so when, in 1954, poet

Jack Spicer Jack Spicer (January 30, 1925 – August 17, 1965) was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'' won the American Book Award for poetry. ...

reopened the space as the Six Gallery. Many of Jess's paintings and

collage Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...

s have themes drawn from

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

alchemy Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...

, the

occult The occult () is a category of esoteric or supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of organized religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving a 'hidden' or 'secret' agency, such as magic and mysti ...

, and male beauty, including a series called ''Translations'' (1959–1976) which is done with heavily laid-on paint in a

paint-by-number Paint by number or painting by numbers kits are self-contained painting sets, designed to facilitate painting a pre-designed image. They generally include Paintbrush, brushes, tubs of paint with numbered labels, and a Canvas#For painting, canva ...

style. In 1975, the

Wadsworth Atheneum The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionism, Impressionist paintings, Hudson Riv ...

displayed six of the "Translations" paintings in their ''Matrix 2'' exhibition. In the late 1950s, Jess also filled

Pauline Kael Pauline Kael (; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for ''The New Yorker'' from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael often defied the conse ...

's home on Oregon St in Berkeley, CA, with fantastical and Romantic murals, which still adorn the walls today. Collins also created elaborate collages using old book illustrations and

comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...

s (particularly, the strip ''

Dick Tracy ''Dick Tracy'' is an American comic strip featuring Dick Tracy, a tough and intelligent police detective created by Chester Gould. It made its debut on Sunday, October 4, 1931, in the '' Detroit Mirror'', and was distributed by the Chicago T ...

'', which he used to make his own strip ''Tricky Cad''). Jess's final work, ''Narkissos'', is a complex rendered 6'x5' drawing owned by the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

. A Jess retrospective (''Jess: A Grand Collage, 1951–1993'') toured the United States in 1993 to 1994, accompanied by a book of the same title. The book included pictures of some of the paintings and collages from the tour. Interspersed between the pictures were essays by various contributors including poet Michael Palmer who wrote an extended piece on Jess's ''Narkissos.'' Sections of Jess's paintings 'Arkadia Last Resort' were used by

Faithless Faithless are an English dance music Band (rock and pop), band that formed in 1995, with its core original members being Rollo Armstrong, Rollo, Sister Bliss and Maxi Jazz. During the band's initial period of success, Sister Bliss and Maxi Ja ...

in 2004 for the front covers to their single " I Want More". In 2008, an exhibition of Jess's drawings was held at Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco. In 2014 and 2015, a traveling exhibit titled "An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan, and Their Circle" toured across the country to warm reception. The exhibit explored what it was like for the couple to be "young, gifted, and odd" in San Francisco after World War II. The two men lived and worked for decades from their historic

Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literatur ...

home in the

Mission District The Mission District ( Spanish: ''Distrito de la Misión''), commonly known as the Mission ( Spanish: ''La Misión''), is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. One of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Mission District's name ...

, which was lined with more than 5,000 books, 5,300 music records, and countless works of visual art.

Museum collections

, San Francisco, CA * The

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), comprising the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco. FAMSF's combined attendance was 1,1 ...

, San Francisco, CA * The Di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA * The

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York City, NY * The

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, New York City, NY * The

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

, New York City, NY * The

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

, Washington, D.C. * The

Crocker Art Museum The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States, located in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1885, the museum holds one of the premier collections of Californian art. The collection includes American works dating f ...

, Sacramento, CA

References

External links

Jess Collins TrustSan Francisco Art Institute: Jess Collins, BFA 1951
from San Francisco Chronicle, January 7, 200

by Kenneth Baker
Ask/ART: Jess
exhibition of Jess's impastos from his "Translation" series together with many of his collages and designs, as well as the books and magazines in which they were reproduced
Guide to the Jess Papers
at

The Bancroft Library The Bancroft Library is the primary special-collections library of the University of California, Berkeley. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retain the name Bancroft Library in perpetuity. ...

Pulled Through Time: A "Caltech News" Reporter Traces the Life of an Elusive Artist

"Jess: Master of Collage Aesthetic"
by Michael Duncan at Siglio Press {{DEFAULTSORT:Collins, Jess 1923 births 2004 deaths American gay artists American collage artists 20th-century American painters Artists from Long Beach, California San Francisco Art Institute alumni Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ people from California 20th-century American LGBTQ people

Biography

Museum collections

References

Further reading

External links