The artist Jess was born Burgess Collins in 1923 in Long Beach California. Jess initially was educated as a chemist and in his career worked on the production of plutonium for the Manhattan Project. In 1949 he abandoned his scientific career and moved to San Francisco where he enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts. Burgess Collins then changed his name to "Jess." n 1951 Jess met poet, Robert Duncan, and began a relationship that lasted until Duncan's death in 1988.

Duncan and Jess worked together to expand and refine a study of world literature and art focused in myths, symbols and archetypes. The couple was active in the Bay Area poetry and art scene. They were good friends with Jay Spicer, Helen Adam, Wallace Berman, Patricia Jordan, Jay DeFeo and Michael McClure. With painter Harry Jacobus the pair ran the King Ubu Gallery in 1952-1953.

Jess created collages to make political and social commentary as well as narrative landscapes. His strongest group of work was Translations (1959-1976) which consisted of 32 paintings of odd images schematically outlined and rendered in a paint by number style canvas. Jess's final work was a six by five foot drawing titled, Narkissos a tableau of symbolic imagery from Greek myths.

Jess died January 2, 2004 from natural causes.

Source:
Michael Duncan, Art in America, March 2004

The following was written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher of Laguna Woods, California:

Jess was born on August 6, 1923 in Long Beach, California. He studied painting at the California School of Fine Arts with abstract painters like Clyfford Still, Edward Corbett and Hassel Smith. In 1959 he began a series of pictures called translations, copies of children's book illustrations, or old snapshots. They looked straightforward in reproduction, but they were built up out of many layers of pigment until they resembled a bas-relief. He painted "paste-ups". enormous collages that were bewilderingly complex. There were also the salvages, early paintings of his own, or others he found, transformed with strange new encrustations.

Looking at Jess' art is like watching a theatrical performance. After taking in its major outlines, you get lost in a maze of detail and then emerge to find yourself looking at a different work.

When Jess was in his twenties, he dropped his last name, California style.

Sources include:
John Ashbery in Newsweek, April 26, 1982
Who's Who in American Art, R.R. Bowker, 1993-4.

Jess' unique imagery, evolved from mythology and fables both playful and profound, has long been admired by critics, curators and writers. Using paper collage or his eccentric painting techniques, Jess did pictures that reference ancient stories and invented symbols, a private world of delicate beauty and gentle absurdity.

1923-2004

EDUCATION
1948 B.S., California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA
University of California, Berkeley, CA
California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA

SELECTED SOLO NON-GALLERY EXHIBITIONS

1993
"Jess; A Grand Collage, 1951-1993," Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY

1990
"Jess: The Romantic Paintings," Palo Alto Cultural Center, CA

1990
"Jess: Emblems for Robert Duncan," San Jose Museum of Art, CA

1987
"Jess: Translations, Salvages and Paste-Ups," Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

1981
The Arts Club Chicago, Chicago, IL

1980
University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA

1977
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, TX

1974
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

SELECTED NON-GALLERY GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2004
"Poetry and its Arts: Bay Area Interactions 1954-2004," California Historical Society, San Francisco, CA

1998
"Art from Around the Bay," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA

1993
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

1992
Royal Academy of Arts, London, England

1990
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

1988
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington,D.C.

1987
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England

1986
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA

1985
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA

1983
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1982
Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX

1981
National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL

Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA