Jessica Billey (born 1969) is a multidisciplinary artist, printmaker, musician, and composer. She has created artworks and violin performances for the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts, the Greenbelt Land Trust (Oregon), and more. She studied fine arts with an emphasis on painting and printmaking at the University of Evansville and Purdue University, and is a long-time collaborator with Raven Chacon (Pulitzer Prize, McArthur Genius Fellowship). In 2017, Jessica launched a creative project that features people who live alone by exploring their unique experiences through portraits and gathered stories. Previous exhibits and performances include IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, NM), SITE Santa Fe (NM), Brooklyn Fire Proof Gallery (NY), Corrine Woodman Gallery (Corvallis, OR), and Postcommodity/Spirit Abuse Gallery (Albuquerque, NM).

People Who Live Alone

Currently there are 38 million people living alone in the US. That’s nearly 30% of all American households. Even with these numbers, the stereotypes and stigmas surrounding solo dwellers has kept this way of living on the sidelines in current conversations. Since 2017, I have been exploring the unique experience of living alone through drawn portraits and shared stories. This exhibit features people and stories from Indiana, New Mexico, California, Oregon, and Washington who live alone. This project aims to provide an accessible platform for people to be seen and heard, and inspire new dialogue and awareness to this very common way of living. Along with this project, I’m sharing some of the work I’ve created while living alone. In recent years this has primarily been woodblock printmaking and most recently, a return to oil painting.