Mural Artist Jessica Cao On the Importance of Beauty
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Time to read 4 min
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Time to read 4 min
I am an artist (primarily murals) based in San Jose, CA. Fun fact: I keep a hammock in my car at all times for emergency tree seating.
I make things that I think are beautiful. At least, I try to. I really do put a lot of time and thought and energy into composing my work, choosing colors, and getting a feel for how my pieces will fit in with the rest of a space. A lot of my work is in public spaces like corporate lobbies and restaurants. Even if someone doesn't find much emotional resonance in my work, I'd like for it to enhance their life somewhat, not be an eyesore.
As to why beauty matters? I would argue that there are environmental and health reasons in favor of beauty. Oftentimes, if someone has bothered to make something beautiful, it also functions well. I'm more likely to hold onto an object that is both highly functional and beautiful. A gooseneck kettle works well for brewing tea and gives me pleasure to gaze upon it. As for health—I can really only speak for myself but I feel irritable and borderline ill at Walmart and much calmer at Whole Foods. Lighting, sound design, packaging—there's a reason people are so delighted by Japanese packaging. My sister and I have literally cut out swatches of packaging and pasted it to our walls for inspiration. Finally, I think most people would be more likely to be inspired to embody their higher selves in Rome than in Bakersfield—to eat well, dress well, and move through the environment on foot.
My creative work is essentially a vehicle for me to exceed the borders of my previous selves. To put it more bluntly: through my artistic practice, I am chasing my own personal development. I think I'm drawn to murals because they are a confluence of artistic and logistical challenges. You're often dealing with construction teams, weather, and the challenges of assessing your work from afar, which often entails mark-making from up close, then lowering a scissor lift 20 feet, walking across the street, deciding what needs adjustment, and going back across the street to adjust. Repeat 50 times. When I start each mural, I brace myself because I know I'm entering the fire to be forged into a stronger, more capable and adaptable self. I don't care if my work gets tagged or painted over because the most important things I gain from making it belong solely to me.
Honestly, I don't really care to apply identity-related acronyms to my work. I think growing up Chinese American informs my visual output equally as much as my scuba diving experiences and my love for space operas. I'm thankful to my mom for taking me to see some of the best of historical Chinese art in the museums of Beijing and Shanghai, but also my parents for sending me to Europe for an entire year when I was 18 years old. I'm not yet 30 and I've been to almost 30 countries, and I think my travels in general have filled up a deep and wide-ranging mental library of visual references that I pull from depending on the parameters of a project.
Visually, my creative ""path"" looks like bushwhacking through alpine terrain. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about how if you picture one's interiority as a room, most people spend their entire life just pacing back and forth in one narrow strip. They never bother to explore the corners near the ceiling or in that shadowy area behind the furniture. I am repulsed by the idea of living life like that—I want, to borrow from another poet, Ross Gay, to explore the edges of my own wilderness. With each new piece, I try to do something new, whether visually or in my use of different materials. There are a lot of R&D fails I've had working with different types of mark-making tools and paint mediums. Making art tests my patience and persistence, but in a good way. I don't subscribe to the idea that each new project needs to be bigger and better, I do prioritize exploring my curiosities. The mural I'm currently working on involves laser-cut stencils, which—although I did a lot of laser cutting in college as a lab tech, I haven't tried within a mural context before. In new projects, I look for opportunities to satisfy my itch for novelty.
I get really tired of people asking me what a work is supposed to mean or how they're supposed to interpret it. Sometimes it's not that deep. Sometimes there may be a deeper personal meaning for me, but I generally lean in favor of "death of the author" and I really would encourage people to bring their own perspectives to interpreting my work. Perhaps this comes from my teaching practice, where I also have a tendency to turn my students' questions back on them.
For a lot of my life, I was quite hard on myself, and I'm proud that I've stopped seeing unexpected problems that arise during a mural job as an indictment of my abilities and preparedness. I can't anticipate everything nor can I control other people involved on a job site, and I can now recognize that I'm an excellent problem solver—my friends call me a "strong swimmer in the deep end." I appreciate how little energy I waste on thinking self-critical thoughts nowadays.
Instagram: @jessicao.studio
