JESSA CARTA*


  1. Rhizomatic Repair(2023)

  2. Trash & Treasure(2023)

  3. Exchange Rate(2023)

  4. Veriditas(2021)

  5. Night Blindness(2021)

  6. Twin Origin(2022)

  7. Breath Type(2021)

  8. Dead Reckoning(2018)

  9. LAND LAND(2017-present)

  10. Lifespan Of A Memory(2019)

  11. Resting Eye Monument(2016)

  12. Charcoal Gestures(2020)

  13. Because I Was Standing(2017)

  14. Continuous Connected(2016)
  15. LOVECITYLOVE(2013-2016)

  16. Things People Say



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Jessa Carta is an omnidisciplinary artist and creative project consultant. She is compelled towards rhizomatic frameworks, pattern literacy and the healing power of ritual containers. Jessa is attuned to the ineffable wiggliness of nature and its harmonious systems/structures in equal measure.

Jessa’s work tracks the leading lines of value, identity and performativity and plays host and witness to the cycles of life <> death <> life present in our ecosystems and egosystems.

Jessa is a deep empath who opens herself to the collective unconscious and vows to give it expression. Her fierce belief in understanding and respecting authentic truths has led her down a path of seismic connections. What she creates has been described as possessing“a rare mythic perspective”, “assertions of feminine power” and Jessa herself has been referred to as “an underworld intermediary”.

Jessa is currently the prime mover of arts-based research project LAND LAND. Jessa is a founding member of the Seattle-based experimental collective LOVECITYLOVE - a diverse, accessible, and inclusive secular art church. Her education and research has included  certifications as a natural builder, permaculturalist and solidarity economist. These interests intersect to net a practice committed to the regenaissance.

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*Jessa’s patrilineal last name is Carter which means messenger, mail carrier or a person who carts goods. In a move towards fewer belongings and more belonging, less doing and more being, Carta replaces “the messenger” for the message itself from the Latin “paper” “map”.






Things People Say




Jessa’s films and pictures are poems, secrets, songs, utopian and dystopian prayers. She is a gentle being with a fierce point of view. In general she and her doings/beings fall right into my favorite pocket of 70’s romanticism combined with the contemporary surreal. Get ready to daydream about her and her work forever.  
Her photos achieve a kind of hallowed, supra-planar quality but also still rooted in everyday things, reminding us that we can escape the mundane because the mundane is as much our psychic creation as the sacred.
                                                      -Blair Hansen


Your Spain film moved me so deeply — you clearly let the collective unconscious express itself through you as its medium. I’m in awe and admiration of the strength you carry as an artist, as it takes supreme energy to withstand the unconscious in that way and remain whole and intact as a person.
                                          -Alma Bigham Tetto


One of the most empowering and vital components to Jessa’s intention as an artist and community member is her empathy. Her fierce belief in understanding, respecting, and finding true authenticity of any one person or group of people has led her down a path of potent connections.  
                       -Babette DeLafayette Pendleton



The term “visual fluency” was coined to describe the talents of people like Jessa Carter. The Northern California-born artist, photographer, graphic designer, stylist, curator and creative director works across a range of mediums, from commercial projects to fine art, applying to each her unerring, highly stylized eye.
                                        - City Arts Magazine



Powerful compositions that capture and create moments of emotional connection, synthesis, and spirit.  
                                      - Bran Ferren



...all the strange feelings the film stirs up....

i’ll try to describe it here in a selected list:

beginning of time

first breath of oxygen

sticking your hands into a bowl of firm jello

insects being born

the experience you have when peeling an orange and carefully removing all the little pithy parts

all wrapped up in a blanket of mysterious tension, not a bad tension, but maybe more of a curious tension

As someone who makes films, I know how much work it all is, to get the details right.
                                        - Theresa Wingert



What shamanic activation of experience….that much intentionality has so much juice…it’s like a memory of something we all could do, have done, will do.  AN INVITATION!!!!!!!!!!!
                                        -  Lisa Fitzhugh


I am forever grateful for Jessa, a badass creative with a mind of a genius and a heart of gold who took a chance on a stranger to bring my vision to life.
                                        - Cleo Barnette