About Jessie McClanahan

Jessie McClanahan is an artist and storyteller from Southern West Virginia. Her upbringing was spent in the forests and coal fields of her mountain home. Her constant struggle to reckon with the extractive industries that have been built in opposition to the land based practices she grew up with are a catalyzing force in her practice.
Jessie finds inspiration in Appalachian folkways; using ceramics, quilting, weaving, printmaking, and natural dyes and pigments. She creates pieces that interrogate the divide between the natural world and the human one. Within her practice she fosters relationships with Fungi, inviting them to become collaborators in her art to further break down the natural and human divide.
Within her pieces Appalachian Identity, ideas on hierarchy, the arrangement and treatment of rural spaces, and our place as humans in ecology are prevalent themes throughout her work.

Biography

Jessie McClanahan hails from Southern West Virginia, brought up in the forests and coalfields that surrounded her hometown. The influence of vehement protection for the environment and its careless destruction by extractive industry highlighted to her the dialogues happening between geography, culture, and economy.
Jessie McClanahan received her MFA from Syracuse University with a BA from West Virginia State University. She was a Tamarack Foundation Emerging Artists Fellow, with exhibitions at Governors Island in New York City, solo exhibitor in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and an invited Artist in Tilcara, Argentina. Her work in sustainable art practices was recognized as a co-curator and featured exhibitor for a portfolio about sustainable printmaking for the 2024 Southern Graphics Council International Conference.

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Other Creative Skills

Ceramics
Textile