Photo courtesy of Jessica Naples Grilli
In her online artist statement, Jessica Naples Grilli describes her interest in the relationship between physical things and the mediums use to record them.
“We are afraid to forget and to be forgotten: We collect, catalog and archive so that we may know what came before and that we might be remembered,” she says. “Our lives are built on this premise; whether for show or for sentiment, much can be said about the things we keep.”
Naples Grilli continues to explore that relationship here in central Ohio.
Born in Fremont, California, Naples Grilli grew up in Youngstown. She attended Kent State University and received her Bachelor of Science in photo illustration in 2009. Her work often combines poetry and photography and how the two can combine to tell a story.
One of her recent works, What We Miss the Most, demonstrates this style. The piece is a book, designed and edited by Naples Grilli, that responds directly to the pandemic. A number of contributors offer photographs and brief, poetic notes on things people have missed since spring 2020.
“I think of myself sometimes as a non-artist, but I have all this experience working with artists and making art,” she says, “But I think I’m so interested in images and language and that relationship that for me, art is kind of the only way I can put them together.”
Naples Grilli moved to Columbus in 2011 as she studied for her master’s in studio art at The Ohio State University. There, she met her fellow classmate and current colleague Amanda Le Kline.
Recently, the duo received a grant to support their South Side Stories project through the Greater Columbus Arts Council’s Neighborhood Arts Connection Fellowship. The fellowship focuses on a specific Columbus neighborhood each year and provides grants for resident artists to create art projects that Jessica Naples Grilli engage the community.
Le Kline and Naples Grilli’s project will collect together stories from residents.
“We decided to propose to create this free publication that people (in southern Columbus) can participate in,” Naples Grilli says. “We can also find our material and information to share to people who have just moved here or for people who like us that have lived here a really long time.”
The two transplant artists were the only ones in their graduate class who chose to live on the city’s South Side.
“We really connected in that way of our neighborhood,” Naples Grilli says.“(We) always knew the South Side was very special.”
Since moving to the area, the artists have collected their own stories of the South Side. Naples Grilli received an unexpected bundle of history after purchasing a house in the area.
Photo courtesy of Jessica Naples Grilli
“It’s a really special house because we’re only the third owners of it,” she says. “It was built in 1904 and we know the entire history of the home because the first owner never had any children or anything and gave all of their family photographs of the home and their correspondence with their family in Germany to a neighbor who then left it in a brown bag on my porch.”
The final project will be published as a newspaper, planned for distribution in December. The grant money will be used in the cost of publishing, so all newspapers will be free. Naples Grilli expects the newspapers to be distributed at the local library branch, neighborhoods, community centers and even some local businesses.
“I think I want people to be able to relate or to have a sense of pride of where they live or as part of this neighborhood,” Naples Grilli says. “The South Side is so diverse, and it has a rich history of industry that Columbus kind of doesn’t have. Like understanding the history of the steel mill, the bluegrass culture and other things that people might not even know about because it’s not so apparent anymore.”
Brendan Martin is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
