Jesse Hickman Bio

Statement
It's just good dumb fun! I try to make my work fun and funny but sometimes drift toward serious, but not too often. I'm not certain why I made my first fish around 1997, I think that it was after seeing a fish decoy that inspired me to make a larger version of it and I haven't stopped since. Most of all is that they give people a smile, and most of us don't smile enough these days.

Education
I studied photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago in the mid seventies, learned what I wanted to learn and left to pursue a career in photography. The rest of what I have learned is self taught.

Exhibitions
I have been in about seventy solo and group exhibitions including theAmerican Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore 1998, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago 1986, 1982 and 1981, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1981, the Smart Museum of Art University ofChicago in 2002, the Laguna Gloria Art Museum in Austin Texas in 1992 and numerous gallery exhibitions.

Grants/Awards
I received a Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant in the early nineties and an Illinois Arts Council grant in the early eighties.

Publications
My work has been featured in more than fourty publications and filmed interviews.

Collections
My work is in the permanent collections of the American Folk Art Museum in NYC, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham Massachusetts, World Bank corporate headquarters Washington D.C., Champion International, Hewlett Packard and many others.

Bio
I was born in Chicago in 1955. I lived there and in New York City
until my mid thirties, and have lived in the country in Petoskey
Michigan since then. I'm not dead yet.