Bitter/Sweet is a collection of works on paper that highlights cultural frivolity, material longing, and imagined spaces.

Artist Jessica Eastburn is inspired by the advent of digital technology since the 1980s and 1990s that has inundated people with information that is often unimportant, trivial, or outright useless. Eastburn’s drawings mimic this contemporary digital overload by illustrating liminal, arbitrary, and incongruous information with swatches and snippets of patterns, motifs, and layers of pop culture iconography. The information presented in the works is often disparate and random, allowing the viewer to concoct their own narrative within the given images.

Furthermore, the process of creating the drawings is the antithesis of “drag and drop” digital technology. The drawings are created wholly by hand using antiquated technology such as the ruler and compass to sketch out the works, as well as gouache, cel-vinyl, airbrush and spray paint to ink cartoons, fill in the drawings, and make gradations.

About the Artist
Jessica Eastburn grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, a time colored with the rising culture of consumerism and the advancements of digital technology that have come to define life in the 21st century. Eastburn’s work responds to and expands upon these elements of modernity.
Eastburn currently lives and works in Oakland, CA. She received her BA in Liberal Studies from Portland State University and MFA in Pictorial Art from San Jose State University.

*image (left)
Flim Flam Man, 2013
gouache on paper, 46x31cm
© 2013 Jessica Eastburn