"Art in the French Quarter" Photograph - Limited Edition of 10

Jessie Marie is a New Orleans–based visual artist whose practice is rooted in curiosity, perception, and the lifelong impulse to explore the world through movement and observation. Her creative path began in childhood through the performing arts, an outlet that nurtured her imagination and taught her to engage with space, rhythm, and gesture. This early sense of embodied play later transformed into a passion for photography when her grandparents gifted her a camera. During a formative trip to New York City, she became captivated by the city’s architectural lines and geometric forms—an experience that established the act of mindful looking that continues to anchor her work.

Raised in a family that valued inquiry and self-expression, Jessie spent her teenage years investigating philosophy, psychology, and religion as she sought to understand the structures shaping human experience. After briefly pursuing psychology, she shifted fully into visual arts, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in 2004. Jessie paused her emerging career to support her husband’s military service and raise their two children, continuing to channel her creativity through graphic design for nonprofit organizations and designing sets and props for ballet companies.

In 2021, a meaningful conversation with her grandfather—who began sculpting in his eighties—encouraged Jessie to return to her artistic practice. After relocating to New Orleans in 2023, she found renewed inspiration within the city’s vibrant arts community and its spirit of creative exchange. Today, her work investigates the fluid boundary between observation and reality, expanding upon the foundations of her early 2000s practice while reframing them through the lens of lived experience.