GRAND RAPIDS, MICH.- The Grand Rapids Art Museum presents Jessica Joy London: A State of Wonder. Jessica Joy London creates paintings and drawings by manipulating colored inks onto paper using everyday objects. This exhibition is GRAM's latest installment in its Michigan Artist Series, and is on view through January 2, 2015.

"Jessica Joy London's paintings are magnets for the curious mind," noted Ron Platt, Chief Curator. "What are we looking at? How did she do that? Jessica's approach to art is experimental, like a research scientist. She doesn't plan the visual outcome of her work—that is determined by the interaction of her materials and the principles of physics."

Jessica Joy London's artworks are artifacts of chance, conscious decision-making, and the laws of natural phenomena. She closely observes the ordinary in the everyday for inspiration and often integrates simple materials into her art, such as water from her fish tank, garlic and onion skins, grapefruit, leaves, and grasses. She combines these with colored inks spilled in a systematic way onto synthetic paper. Her bright, abstracted images look both biologically organic and mysterious.

"I imagined if it rained color, the landscape would look like my paintings," explained Jessica Joy London. "Shades of blue would flow from leaf to fallen leaf picking them up and repositioning them on bright green blades of grass and grey concrete in harmonious compositions."

Born in Essequibo, Guyana, London holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has exhibited in the United States and internationally, including the Artcomplex Center of Tokyo, the Smithsonian’s S. Dillon Ripley Center, the Kennedy Center’s Hall of States in Washington, D.C., and the Tampa Museum of Art. She is represented by the River Gallery in Chelsea, Michigan.

Throughout its 100+ year history, the Grand Rapids Art Museum has featured the work of Michigan artists in its exhibition program. This tradition is now formalized into the Michigan Artist Series, to be presented in galleries throughout the Museum, which highlights the work of living artists or designers working in diverse media who reside in the state.