Hi! 👋
I’m Jess. I’m a designer, educator, and lifelong maker, and I’m so glad you’re here.
I envision Creative Pursuits Studio as a place in the community where ideas take shape—through design, craft, and collaboration. Rooted in curiosity, creativity, and a love of learning, the goal of this future space is to invite exploration, connection, and creative growth.
My focus right now is on making meaningful art, teaching hands-on skills (like crochet), and accepting inquiries for commissions.
My Background 👩🎨🕵️♀️👩🔬
I’ve been a critical thinker and creative my whole life.
In my youth, I signed up for every art class I could, took woodshop in Junior High School rather than the option they typically guided girls to, and gravitated to spending time in nature.
While in college at USC, I studied Communication and explored the richness of how humans communicate (i.e. make sense of the world) and continued pursuing my love of art with an Arts & Graphics minor. I started my career working in graphic design and marketing which prompted me to dig deeper and seek more meaning.
This ultimately led me to pursue a masters degree in Design from the Institute of Design (ID). I was so energized by the big questions we were asking, the meaty challenges we were tackling, and by the diversity in careers and cultures of our student body. My coursework focused on research, strategy, and communication design.
After ID, I worked in various design and research roles helping people better understand each other and inspiring valuable iterations and launches of products and services, both big and small. I have always applied a creative and experimental mindset to my work and innovated on tools and methods.
This Chapter
When I left the corporate work world in mid-2019, I had a move to the Bay Area ‘burbs in the works, a summer 2020 wedding on the horizon, and an intention to become pregnant and build a family with my partner. The universe had its own plans, of course. We still moved, we still got married in 2020 (privately; then celebrated with family and friends in 2022), and we still tried to conceive. All the while, trying to figure out how to refocus my energy. Over the course of the last few years, I’ve experienced a lot: from multiple fertility treatments that did not yield the outcome we were hoping for to seeking and receiving professional help in recovering from a mental health crisis, from many visits helping aging parents to deaths in the family, from taking a range of enriching classes at the local adult ed center to now teaching a class myself, from working from home remotely as a contractor with former colleagues and classmates to exploring entrepreneurship. It’s been an unexpected and meaningful chapter of my life, and one that is still unfolding. I’ve reconnected with creative passions and am discovering new ones. My perspective and goals have shifted and continue to do so.
Looking ahead with gratitude
As I forge ahead on this uncharted path, I’m so grateful for the people who love and support me most: my steadfast, encouraging, fun-loving, expressive, and super talented husband; and my incredible mother, who has been my forever cheerleader and shoulder-to-cry-on, my absolute best friend and biggest advocate. I wouldn’t be where I am without you. And also to the friends in my life, whether we’ve known each other for decades or we’ve just recently met, thank you for the conversation, laughter, adventures, and companionship as I’ve traversed this part of life. I’m excited to keep pursuing art, design, and creativity in its many forms and am eager to do so in community with fellow artists, makers, and creative folks. If that sounds like you, let’s connect and see what we can do together.