We recently connected with Rula Jones and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Rula, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I just recently published an artist monograph, a 36 paged booklet that incorporates both writing and multi-media art. The booklet, entitled, Indigene, was funded by The Frederick Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

It is an important work because most of my accomplishments have been mostly in visual art. The monograph format allowed me to pursue a long-time interest in memoir writing while also incorporating visual art at points that I felt were too painful or too complex to use words to express.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As an artist I focus on questions of identity. The world is becoming ever more globalized and being multicultural within it often feels like floating untethered in space.. My works are often interdisciplinary in nature and feel more philosophical.

As a contemporary art curator, I have focused on a variety of themes pertinent to contemporary life and art including climate change, community, conceptual art and color as a subject matter.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I’m influenced by an eclectic variety of writers, artists, philosophers. It would be a difficult task to name them all but I can name a few.  

One example would be Ralph Waldo Emerson, who cheekily proclaims, “All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.” I quote him in the beginning of Indigene. Emerson is considered the founder of the philosophy of American transcendentalism, a movement which I consider to be critically important and noteworthy.

Other writers and artists that have had a profound impact upon me include, Silvia Plath’s poems, Kurt Vonnegut’s memoir book, A Man Without a Country, the journals of the artist Anne Truitt, William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, Grendel by John Gardner, all the works of Margaret Atwood and the artists Jenny Holzer, Valie Export, Kiki Smith, Mona Hatoum, Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago and of course, so many others.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

To simply understand the nature of existence and in my own place within it, is the driving force of my work. I think that scientists, artists, writers, philosophers, etc. are all invested in the investigation of the nature of existence.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rulaportfolio.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rula_j_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rula.jb.1/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rula-jones-7a844b6a/
• Other: https://www.rulaportfolio.com/indigene-an-artist-monograph.html

Image Credits
All images belong to Rula Jones