Jess Wainer’s passion for drawing emerged at a young age from her curiosity and observations about culture, human expression, the body, and nature. At the age of ten, Jess’s parents set up a small ceramics studio for her in their home in Ohio. In the following 8 years art became Jess’s primary focus, which lead her to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) for her undergraduate work, where she studied glass, sculpture, art history, and new media installation. In her third year at RISD, Jess was awarded the Holbrook Scholarship to attend the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, where she was introduced to the ceramic technique ‘sgraffito’, a process where wet clay is stained and drawings are carved into the surface of the clay creating a two-toned image. After this introduction Jess found herself yearning to blend the instinctive and immediate qualities of sgraffito with the luminous, luscious colors and forms of blown glass. Jess developed an innovative application for a photosensitive film that does just that, it allows her to carve free-hand line drawings into hand-blown glass vessels. The work Jess creates using this process employs an architectural aesthetic to transform the mundane into unexpectedly beautiful objects.

Jess Wainer’s passion for drawing emerged at a young age from her curiosity and observations about culture, human expression, the body, and nature. At the age of ten, Jess’s parents set up a small ceramics studio for her in their home in Ohio. In the following 8 years art became Jess’s primary focus, which lead her to the Rhode Island School of Desig... show more »