About Jodi

SHORT BIO

I've been making art since I was old enough to hold a crayon, and art has remained part of my life in different ways, from mere dabbling to blissful obsession.

I'm incarcerated at Perryville, the women's prison in Arizona, and I'm appealing the life sentence I was given. (See Justice4Jodi.com to find out more about that.)

Today, I continue making art and sharing it here, where you can acquire some of it for yourself, or just peruse and read my blog.

To learn more about my lifelong love affair with art, please see my expanded bio below.

Thank you for visiting!

-Jodi

EXPANDED BIO

The Common Creative Thread

When I was two and three years old, I would climb out of bed, make my way downstairs to the master bedroom and wake up my mom, who loved sleeping in. She would set me up in the living room with cartoons, crayons, and a coloring book, then go back to sleep.

I scribbled in my book, intermittently entranced by the different colors and by Tom chasing Jerry, or Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner. Some of the darker crayons looked the same. I couldn't read, but I distinguished them by their colored wrappers. It seemed like magic the way purple or blue became so vivid on paper.

In kindergarten, I loved painting. But the nice teacher made me stop and go do another activity when I didn't listen to her directive not to mix the paints.

By the time I was twelve, my parents realized my interest in art was more than a phase, and they enrolled me in an after-school art class. This was the best classroom I had ever entered up to that point. Instead of handing out textbooks and assigning homework, the teacher passed out art supplies.

I was thrilled to take art as an elective in middle school. The period for art class fell between math and science, an oasis in the middle of the day. The art teacher was a laid-back Vietnam veteran who enjoyed making his own art alongside his students. He understood the fickle nature of inspiration and allowed me to continue with a poster-sized bulldog I was rendering in charcoal while many of the other students began paper-mache masks.

My family and I moved to Yreka, California, the summer before I started high school. Art was not available as an elective to freshman students. This class was in such high demand that I had to wait until my sophomore year to take it. 

When I finally enrolled, I was assigned to the first-period class. I could not have designed a better way to start a day of school. If I had to relive every morning for the next thousand years by starting each day in that class, I would call it paradise.

When I was sixteen, my grandma gave me an old collection of oil paints and brushes that had been gathering dust. She didn't paint and I never asked her how she came by those or why she kept them, but sometimes, I like to think it was destiny. 

I sat at her kitchen table and brushed some musty-smelling yellow ochre paint onto a thin sheet of printer paper, having no idea how oils worked. After several minutes, a ring of grease had formed around the pigment, as if I'd dropped some oily cheese there instead. Grandma said I needed canvas.

I can't remember who drove me, but I went to an art store an hour away in Medford, Oregon, that exploded my narrow artistic vision: Michaels. My thinking had been so small that I never imagined such a place existed. (I had a similar experience the first time I walked into Barnes and Noble, but that's another story.)

At Michaels, I found every size of canvas, from tiny to huge, plus racks on racks of brushes, and colors I didn't know could exist in paint. I earned money working part-time at my dad's restaurant, which helped me start with a few canvas boards, a small set of brushes, and a little can of paint thinner.

I would have loved attending art school at a college level. I had heard of schools in San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston that sounded legendary, but I never tried to apply to them because of my poor grades in high school. Nor could I see myself succeeding in an art career. The starving-artist stereotype begat nightmarish visions of sleeping on random couches, unable to afford rent or a tank of gas, much less a mortgage or children. I chose waiting tables and tending bar for the short-term security of leaving every shift with cash in my pocket. But even as a career server and bartender, I still found myself struggling to pay rent or a mortgage, and even found myself crashing on the occasional couch that did not belong to me.

I found photography as a kid, and though I lacked the equipment to produce refined work, I had fun photographing my friends, pets, and toddler siblings. In my twenties I bought a good camera and began building a portfolio of weddings and portraits. I enjoyed enhancing images that chronicled a couple's important shared rite. I got referrals for engaged couples and booked more weddings, and I started to see how this creative outlet could generate a viable income.

Then, I completely derailed my life. When I went to jail, I stopped thinking about art for a while. Grappling with what I thought was the end of my life, I couldn't focus on creativity. I drew my sister's portrait and sent it to my mom, but for a time, I drew nothing else. I began drafting a memoir I never finished, and harbored ideas of turning it over to my family or legal team, then killing myself. 

Gradually, the months turned to years, and I turned to art again. The women in jail would sit for me and I practiced drawing their portraits. Sometimes, I practiced on their skin by giving them tattoos.

Many of these women had already been to prison and were back for another round. They regaled me with stories of the myriad art supplies available at Perryville, the women's prison in Goodyear, Arizona. They spoke of art shows hosted by the prison for the public, and programs that fostered artistic pursuits. Compared to county jail, Perryville sounded like Disneyland. I didn't tell them I had no intention of making it to prison.

A few years in, I wrote to my brother from jail and asked if he would list my drawings on his eBay account. He agreed, and I began sending him my work. At first, only a few pen pals responded to my then-feeble marketing efforts, but their support helped a little with commissary expenses. I often felt hungry in jail, and my family could do little to support me, an adult who should have been feeding herself.

When my art began to gain wider public recognition, eBay banned it on the grounds that I was a felon. Despite plenty of felons running successful stores on that platform, and random opportunists using it to exploit me by hawking a postcard I may or may not have written, I was prohibited from earning an income there with skills I had worked all my life to develop.

So I started my own little store here at JodiArias.com. This is a space where I can share my art with you and where you can acquire it for yourself, or just peruse and read my blog.

I came to Perryville after six and a half years in county, despite having wasted much of that time ideating my own demise. Some people think suicide is the coward's way out, and maybe in some ways, it is. But I know it takes balls to kill yourself because I was never able to work up the nerve to do it. And I'm glad I copped out that way. I'm glad I lost my nerve and waited just one more day, every day.

Today, I am light-years from that destructive mentality. Distance has gifted me with perspective, and the horrors I have overcome have deepened my appreciation for a life I once contemplated throwing away. Now, I want to be present for every moment and spend time with people who love me in spite of my pervasive flaws, annoying idiosyncrasies, and innumerable mistakes. And I want to make art. This latter inclination—compulsion, really—has been the common creative thread through my entire life.

Every morning, I wake with gratitude in my heart, the intent to savor the freeze-dried coffee in my plastic cup, and make art. Because when I'm making art, it feels like my soul is saying, Yes! This is not in English or any verbal language, but more an internal symphony that I want to keep playing on repeat. Of course, a lot of mornings do not unfold with this lofty aspirational momentum, but having these goals enables me to course-correct. And creating art is the course I should be on. It always has been.