We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jai Knight a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jai thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Throughout my lifetime art has been a way to process challenging emotions, creating a safe space to transform trauma. As I’ve journeyed through life integrating many forms of healing including a 9 year meditation practice, working with plant medicine, somatic therapy, and traditional Chinese medicine I have become more grounded in processes that  allow me to extend what I’ve learned through one on one ritual tattoo sessions, workshops on emotional transformation, and recycling center project which transforms literal waste into works of art.

My tattooing work is a collaborative process honoring the experiences of my client. With this work I offer a space for a client to express the experience they are moving through physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. We then enter a meditation together where I am guiding my client into a grounded space rooted in presence with the 5 senses.  Either myself, or both the client and I will receive images and symbols with our eyes closed pertaining to the ritua; intentions. We then co-create a symbol that is charged with protection and intention to be tattooed on the chosen part of the body. Tattooing in this way creates embodiment of the power we have as human beings to manifest our reality from an intention.

Recycling Center is a concept I have created in 4 states as pop-up experiences. Here I work with the community to interrupt the literal and metaphorical waste stream. As Americans- we are given an environment that creates a disconnect from the waste stream. We flush our water down a drain, put our trash on the street, and it disappears. That’s it. As Aquifers are increasingly drying up, so is our connection to closed loop healthy cycles. This is not separate from the mental health epidemic.

I offer an opportunity to process our mental loops, limiting beliefs, and waste stream. Rather than blaming ourselves, throwing emotions in the trash to be numbed through self-medication, addiction, etc, I aim to create space to reflect on what limiting beliefs are and how we can make them seen, forgiven and transmuted through the physical transformation of paper waste. Here we create paper sculptures that can act as a permanent interruption into our toxic mental patterning and systems of waste. In the most recent rendition of this workshop we created lanterns as reminders of our ability to shine the light on what has built up within us, and shift it into positive affirmations that can create a shift in our internal experience of our external world.

Jai, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

The work I create questions how to be at home in a changing world knowing the systems in place are no longer serving us, yet not quite knowing what’s next. The intention of my current work is to create systems exploring the waste stream and generative opportunities for processing waste and emotions as a celebratory ritual. Informed by phenomenological approaches, I seek to facilitate multi-sensory experiences that explore human consciousness in connection with the natural world in juxtaposition with consumerist waste. Envisioning utopias amidst dystopian realities brings beauty to charred landscapes as temples and sacred objects are formed from paper waste and abandoned structures. In attempting to “deanthropentize” my process, I first engage in a conversation with a place, bodies of water, plants, and animals. I apply ancient technologies and philosophies to contemporary issues through sculptural papermaking with paper waste and opportunistic plants, weaving with plastic “garbage”, and woodblock printing with wildfire charcoal. My work is interdisciplinary utilizing my body and the bodies of participants as an object of performance. My art serves as an investigation into the liminal space between self and other, body and mind, God and environment.

I identify as a non-binary interdisciplinary artist currently living in SW USA. My work consists of the transformation of literal and metaphorical waste into physical artwork and socially engaged projects integrating ritual in connection with land. I received my BFA in painting at Daemen College (NY,2015) and have studied land stewardship throughout Chile (2016-17), 3 month mentorship with Cata Calores at Ecoescuela Vivencial in the lower Atacama Desert, 9 month study at Dhamma Dena Meditation Center (Joshua Tree, CA 2019), Certification in Permaculture and Advanced social systems design with the Women’s Permaculture Guild (specializing in Arid Climate adaptation with mentorship from Meiling Colorado, 2020), work occasionally with Linda Sibio’s Cracked Eggs Project (2020-current), and am currently enrolled in the Confluence Program with the University of New Mexico (MFA). I have been an artist in Residence at A-Z West in Joshua Tree, CA (2022), UTE AIR in Sunshine Valley, NM (2021-2022), and Lookout Arts Quarry (March/April 2023). My recent work with the House project integrates natural ink making, woodblock printing, poetry, collaborative meaning making, and community education and recycling through “Recycling Center”, a paper-making workshop.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding part of being an artist is to share experiences with others. These experiences may be as simple as someone picking up my book, flipping to a page, and finding meaning within that. The experiences can also be sharing a feeling of safety, excitement, or wonder within a workshop, or the experience of feeling heard, seen, and understood through a tattoo session. I want to offer something that I so desperately needed at different times in my life and did not know where to go. This is why if I could provide that for one person or a hundred people it is worth it.

Contact Info:

• Website: JaimeSchmidtArts.com
• Instagram: @strangebrainz @skin_ritual_art

Image Credits
Photo by Jono Melamed (yoneland.com)