Jessica Park
Jessica Hillary Park was born on July 20, 1958, in Williamstown, where she still lives and works as a mail clerk for Williams College. Jessy’s mother documented her daughter’s struggle with autism in two groundbreaking books, The Siege, The First Eight Years of an Autistic Child (1967) and its sequel, Exiting Nirvana, A Daughter’s Life with Autism (2001). Nirvana is the term her mother used to describe her daughter’s early age state of “enraptured, timeless, self-stimulating nothingness.” When Jessy was found to have autism at the age of about three, little was known about the neurological disorder.
To make Jessy notice the world around her, her mother attributed colors to things. Jessy was quickly able to describe colors with adjectives such as “peacock-green.” Her parents realized that art was the perfect tool to expand her social skills. Jessica Park is largely a self-taught painter. Growing up in a well-educated environment, she was in contact with books, especially art books. Furthermore, her grandfather was an art historian and an artist whose original prints are on display in the family home. Jessy did not paint consistently until patrons started buying her work. Jessy exclusively uses acrylic paints. Before starting to paint, she carefully arranges all 64 tubes and never uses a hue straight from the tube. Her heightened color sensitivity allows her to work with six or seven different shades of one color, diluted to the point that they look white to the unsuspecting eye. In order to achieve the most detailed rendering of a building, she sketches on site.
Despite this focus on detail, Jessy’s technique has progressed to the point that she now uses colors to suggest shadows. She can detach herself from the camera-like vision supposedly characteristic of autistic people, and she uses her artistic license for the sake of the composition. That achievement is to her parents’ credit, for they were the ones who foresaw the use of “art as a vehicle for social learning,” according to Clara Park.
However, her buildings made of many juxtaposed small segments betray her inability to grasp the object as a single entity. Jessy’s paintings clearly speak of the Nirvana that she has left behind and offer us a vision of our world seen through her mind. As a result, she has turned her disability into strength. Jessy’s autism is incurable, but her story is nonetheless one of success, of a thousand small skills scrupulously acquired and a thousand more yet to be mastered.
Description:
“This is the southeast lighthouse in Block Island which was built in 1873. The iridescent rainbow altocumulus lenticularis below Ursa Minor are nacreous clouds. Notice the purple sky through the lighthouse window is bluer, because of the panes. The light to the left is primrose yellow with lime lines. The muntins around the light are phthalo blue. The two rails are black. The base below the light is magenta. Part of the bracket is blue. The window panes in the house and the ring on the bracket finial are French untramarine blue. The part to the right of the molding is the same color as the mortar between the bricks. The bricks are American bond.”
Description:
“These windows are in Aunt Adrienne’s house in Brooklyn. The doors slide open and close. There’s a shadow on the right-hand panel. The doors open on three hinges. The floor that is the closest is made of wood. I made it brick red instead of brown just to make it interesting. The floor that is behind it is made of slate tile. The fence was a neutral color, but I made it pink with light magenta lines. The tree is in the yard. The sun is peeking out from behind the tree. The sun was setting when I started to sketch this. I went to Aunt Adrienne’s house with my parents in June, and I happened to make this sketch, but I didn’t finish it until the 30th of December.”
These are just two of many!
