We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jordan Abba. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jordan below.

Alright, Jordan 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?

Art is something that connects us to the world, our emotions, other people, and helps us make meaning of the things around us. Art, to me, is something valuable that holds a meaning or memory and when I look at the work I can feel a sense of belonging and connection.

Becoming a mother has hands down been the most meaningful project I have worked on or I think will ever work on. From it, I have been inspired to create art about what I love the most and how that has impacted me.
The series is called “Motherhood” and most closely surrounds the early postpartum motherhood experience. The work is an abstract impression of the emotions a new parent feels. I used elements like, line and color, to create emphasis on the emotion to create abstract representations of a mother, or father, with baby.

The idea for the work was to have a sense of feeling before seeing, or, identifying figures. In a way, to feel and experience what happens right after having my child. There is a whirlwind of emotions like joy, sadness, longing, happiness, mixed with nostalgia and exhaustion. Trying to understand or explain what it feels like to go through is nearly impossible. I wanted to create a representation of what it feels like to become a parent.

This work is meaningful to me because it was such a powerful and emotional time. I sought to bring the bittersweet nostalgia of change from who you were to who you are now, as a mother, a father, a new parent. I wanted to evoke curiosity in the viewer to feel the power of the bond between parent and child. The mixed media paintings I created in my series, “Motherhood,” is meant for everyone, because although not all of us is a parent, each one of us is a child. The work is meant to be felt by the parent and the child in us, to experience love through the power of connection and that is why it is so meaningful to me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am an artist and an art teacher. I have taught visual art in Knoxville for eight years so far and love that I get to make art and share my love for it with others everyday as my career! It is a joy and a blessing. As a child, I always loved making art, writing stories, coming up with ideas or inventions. For me, it became pretty clear that teaching art would be a good option for me. I graduated from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where I also grew up and where I still live and work.

Something that I have found and is really valuable when inspiring my students is to show them that I make art too. I like to work with them on art projects as they are also creating in class. I think this helps them find some credibility in me as their teacher, but also shows that I care about them, too. It is important to me and I want it to be important to them. This mentality helps keep up my game. I am constantly working on new projects or coming up with ideas on making art that I love.

I continue to pursue my art endeavors outside of school by staying connected with the arts community locally, doing markets and shows in local establishments. Since I am a teacher, I have access to a lot of materials to make different types of art, but I prefer paintings and mixed media work. I love paint and mixed media because of its layering properties and the capability for variety. I could do a watercolor painting, but add in a little acrylic, and then top it off with some Sharpie or gel pen, and continue layering. I love the contrast shown with the different materials and enjoy seeing the depth created from working with multiple materials on a single piece.

One of the aspects of me as an artist that I think really stands out is my focus on creating art that connects with people. I love doing commission work. Some of my most popular commissions are of pets, homes, and people. I enjoy being able to put together something that is meaningful to someone in some way. It is really empowering to be able to paint something, do something I love and enjoy, and in return give somebody a physical, tangible item of something that is important to them. It is really a driving force for me as an artist and motivates me daily.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

It is so easy to people who have not engaged with art to think that it does not make sense or that it is not relevant in the “real world.” I see this a lot as a teacher. Oftentimes, my subject area is not taken as seriously as the others and is seen more of as a class for fun. And although I agree, art is a class where we have fun, there is so much more to being engaged with art than just fun. Art is everywhere. It is in everything we look at, every single person you see is a work of art in how they chose to wear their hair, the clothes they put on, the type of decor they put in their house, even to the types of plants they grow in their front yard. All of these things, and much more, is artwork. To me, art is how we connect and make meaning in the world. It provides for us a freedom that I think a lot of us long to have, but loose somewhere along the way. Being an artist is for everyone. Finding who you are and what you love in life and doing it purposefully is empowering, it is art, and it brings life to the table. As an artist, I strive to make those connections to the people who view my art and hope that after engaging with it feel a little more connected to the world around them.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I will be the first one to tell you, I do not have a lot of followers on Social Media. I actually am in the process of building a separate account just for my art content. In the past, I had my art and personal in one account, and while that was great, most of my content was not art related, but rather family related. This is not a bad thing necessarily, but I think that one thing I aim to do with just the art account is to grow a following of people who are interested in the art I make and who I am as an artist. And although who I am as a person and artist overlap, I think that I will build more of a following under my branding as an artist on that page than my personal page, which is important to me. That would be my one piece of advice for those who are just starting out with managing professional accounts.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jordanabbaart.com
• Instagram: @jordanabbaart
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/jordanabbaart