Jennifer Seas

About Jennifer Seas

Like many people, I learned the art of care-taking from my mom. She was a doting mother when I was young, and she imagined creative and sometimes secret ways to care for me as I grew older, when caring for me in plain view became a treacherous activity in a violent household. I was a teenager when she told me that she thought my calling in life was to help people die—a weird thing to say to a fifteen-year-old girl. Being in the company of the dying has never been an uncomfortable space for me, maybe because I grew up on a farm where I consistently had to care for creatures dying both peacefully and violently, maybe it’s because my moon is in my twelfth house, and maybe that is also why every day I feel the privilege of being able to live a life with choice.Now, of course, I know that my mother was merely foretelling our future, that only five years after she revealed my proposed destiny, I would move all my things into storage and sleep on a couch for six months next to the hospital bed in my childhood home to act as her primary caretaker—making food for her, watching rodeos and HGTV, listening to Little Earthquakes, massaging her temples, bathing her, and helping her die. When I found out I was pregnant, the only indication that I could take care of a baby was that I had cared for her in this way. My son was born exactly one year, one month, one week, one day, and one hour from the moment she died while I was sitting next to her.Learning to caretake from my mother meant that I also learned her style of care-taking: self-sacrifice to the point of annihilation. I risked demonstrating her example as I earned dual undergraduate degrees and a master’s degree as a single mother. After all these years, choosing to live has become a much easier task. I understand that I don’t have to die so that someone else can live, so instead I choose to live my life in ways that never seemed possible to my mother. The best way to honor her sacrifice is my adamant refusal to emulate it. I now feel called to help people live their best lives as an act of care. I often perform this calling by making the impossible feel possible and creating experiences that are durational, unfold in space, and encourage transformational encounters. I thrive on developing relationships with people and facilitating environments that help them create the most ambitious work they can imagine.

Experience

1. Director and Chief Curator

   Tarble Arts Center

   Jun 2020 — Present · Charleston, IL, US

Education

• Northeastern Illinois University

  BA, Art and Psychology

  2004 — 2007

• Washington University in St. Louis

  MFA, Visual Art

  2010 — 2012