We recently connected with Janell Nelson and have shared our conversation below.

Janell, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

Truth is, no. I wouldn’t change my start time. Even on the days I questioned whether I belonged (which was early in my career — in the educational publishing industry as a graphic designer).

There were many seasons early on where I didn’t fully see myself as an “artist,” at least not in the romanticized sense. My trajectory was linear, until it wasn’t: I went to college thinking I would focus on a “business” degree—whatever that meant to me at the time I couldn’t tell you, because I KNEW after that first semester that that was *not* it! I switched to fine art, then art therapy, then graphic design. After school my career landed me first as a prop assistant for an in-house photostudio department (in-between working as a waitress part-time), then design intern, to junior graphic designer (while auditioning for random lifestyle modeling gigs part-time), senior designer, then a creative director (while dabbling in real-estate and freelancing as a designer part-time). Eventually I ventured to be owner of my own design firm. Shortly after that, I co-formed an arts collective with other creatives from my childhood neighborhood, and now the official Director of Englewood Arts Collective (Folded Map nonprofit). Now my career is an amalgamation of all that: the work I do today holds space for my roots as a fine artist, exploring printmaking and sculpture, while working with and advocating for many other artists that inspire me.

There’s been times where life’s transitions left me feeling disjointed. In hindsight, they were anything but. Each role built upon the last. Each skill compounded and each “side quest” armed me with tools I use daily.

For example, designing and producing my own wedding became a real-world test run for the kind of multilayered, concurrent, intentional moment-making I now steward at-scale via community events.When I was 19, I worked as a park district kids camp manager. I loved realizing fun ways to engage and corral groups of abundant energy. This was long before I had the language for what I do now with our non-profit: community engagement and creative placemaking. Playful, affirming, joy-forward energy is what I try to bring into rooms I enter today. Joy is a choice. Black joy and space to release and cull care is a radical act in a world of harm and harmful narratives. I see now that so much of my experiences in different spaces led me to where I am today.

So no: I don’t wish I’d started sooner or later. I started exactly when I needed to. The frustrations, the doubts, my seemingly long road wading through experiential creative work before actually claiming the title “artist” fully shaped a practice that is both imaginative and deeply operational. A trajectory that positioned me to reflect positively on the community that made me.

Janell, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m Janell Nelson, a Chicago-based creative strategist, visual communicator, and public-art producer. I lead JNJ Creative, my design studio, and I’m also the co-founder and Director of Englewood Arts Collective (EAC), an artist-led creative placemaking group operating within a nonprofit (Folded Map).

My work exists at the intersection of art, design, and community. I specialize in transforming complex ideas, whether civic, cultural, or historical, into clear and emotionally resonant experiences. That can take the form of a large-scale public mural, exhibition design, neighborhood arts activation, curriculum, or a multi-day festival footprint. The common thread is intention and well, “humanness”. I’m ever thankful to say that I judiciously choose and enact projects with the intention to evoke positive energy in the folks engaging with it.

Through EAC I steward artist-led public art, cultural programming, and land-based activations that reframe narratives about historically disinvested communities, particularly on Chicago’s South and West Sides. We don’t beautify. We curate joy, create economic opportunities for artists, and use creative activity as a catalyst for investment, care, and visibility.

What sets me apart is that I don’t separate artists and artistry in the public space from infrastructure. I understand budgets, timelines, zoning, stakeholder alignment, and logistics, but I also understand feeling, symbolism, and visual language. That dual fluency allows me to lead projects where artists are centered and supported, community engagement is non-extractive, and creative work can exist in ways that sustain people.

Friends joke that my brain moves at 10,000 miles an hour, lol. I leverage my hyper-creative-cognition to problem solve with others. I’m a valued thought-partner to many and have been behind-the-scenes for years now helping build ecosystems as well as standalone projects that inspire. From supporting hundreds of artists through commissions and mutual-aid initiatives, transforming vacant land into sites of cultural care, and helping institutions rethink how artists can be engaged earlier and more equitably in their processes, at its core, my work is about legacy. It’s about creating conditions where artists, especially Black artists, can thrive, lead, and be compensated well for their brilliance.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Go beyond fair pay.

Pay artists not only for what they produce, but for what they *generate*: ideas, insight, vision, their unique networks and problem-solving. Compensate artists to be in rooms early. Pay them to meet, to think, to experiment, to exist within planning processes before outcomes are predetermined.

Artists are often brought in at the end, once decisions are already made. A thriving ecosystem requires trusting artists upstream — valuing their intellect and lived experience as essential, not decorative.

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

The most rewarding part of being an artist for me is just that! I am CREATING, and not just objects, but possibilities.

Being an artist affirms that I can imagine and build new solutions to real problems. Yes I’m making visual work, but I’m also creating systems, experiences, and environments that didn’t exist quite like that before. It might sound a bit cliché, but doing my part to creating the world I want to live in— and the world I want my child to inherit is a lifeline for me.

The ultimate art form for me is respectful and enthusiastic collabs with others. Leaning into the many intersections of what “community” can look like, and serving within that. Seeing people gather, feel seen, proud and/or joyful, and knowing I helped make the conditions for that to happen is quite the reward indeed. That’s the work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://janellnelson.com
• Instagram: jtothenell
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janell-nelson-jnjcreative/
• Other: Instagram: englewoodartscollective

  other websites:
  englewoodartscollective.org

Image Credits

Demetrius Barry
Christian Demar
Hoofprint