Tell Me How to Be a Lily

Solo exhibition
July 3–September 30, 2025

Yorba Gallery
51 Hanford St
Sutter Creek, CA

Curated by James Aarons

“Jessalyn brings together collages made over seven years where found imagery—flowers, rocks, shells, leaves, and everyday objects—along with hand-cut paper shapes, stickers, and vinyl show up as source material. Some are arranged in spirals, others into domestic or outdoor scenes. Each composition is influenced by close attention to the world around her; a neighborhood walk, a still corner of a room, a quiet moment in nature. Careful, gentle focus guides these works. The show's title, Tell Me How to Be a Lily, references a song by Connie Converse, expressing an aspiration to live with calm and attention.” (Press Release)

Sitting By the Window (Snail Is Listening), 2025
collage on museum board, 17 × 22”

Waiting in Line Outside Berkeley Bowl, February, 2021
2025, collage on Bristol, 14 × 17.

I began this work during the early days of the pandemic, standing in line each week outside the grocery store, carefully sanitizing hands and putting on masks. One February morning, before spring had fully arrived, I watched goldfinches flitting through the sycamore trees—a small moment of hope in an otherwise dark and stressful time.

Neighborhood Walk (Robin Singing), 2025
collage on Bristol board, 14 × 17”

A young male robin spent last year and this spring perching on the parking garage across the street from my house, singing his distinctive song each morning and evening. Neighborhood birds and trees seen daily on walks and from our windows appear here, including the sycamores and the crows that roost in them each night. One crow appears mid-heist, having pried a yogurt container from our roof and shoved it over the ledge to retrieve its contents on the sidewalk below.

Cleaning Mushrooms (Frog is Watching), 2025
collage on museum board, 17 × 22”

I imagined a world where the best wild mushrooms could all be hunted at the same time and place.

Bouquet for Myself, 2024
collage on Bristol board, 11 × 14”

Since 2021, I've made bouquet artworks for people and organizations I want to support. Additionally, arranging wildflowers gathered from the local hills has become part of a personal healing practice, helping me process loss and difficult emotions.

I made this piece in November 2024, following a week that included an anxiety-inducing medical procedure and disheartening election results—combining paper and nature-based bouquet-making as a way to extend myself the same care I often reserve for others.

Bouquet for WALC (California Wildflowers), 2025
collage on museum board, 11 × 14”

For this show, I wanted to create a bouquet connected to the gallery region. My mind returned to a camping trip I once chaperoned with the high school where I used to teach (San Francisco's Balboa High). Each September, students visit at Chaw'se State Park (chaw'se means "grinding rock" in Miwok), about twenty minutes from the gallery for the annual Big Time festival. Here I witnessed a Miwok ceremony in the hun'ge (roundhouse).

The trip was part of the Wilderness Arts and Literacy Collaborative (WALC), a teacher-led program at Balboa and Downtown Continuation High Schools that integrates environmental and ethnic studies for lower-income youth of color who have historically been underserved. I was fortunate to teach alongside its founders, Ken Gonzalez and Conrad Benedicto, and to see firsthand how transformative the program has been for its students.

This bouquet incorporates California wildflowers, acorns, and pinecones that students experience on WALC trips across Northern California.

Looking for Mushrooms (Chanterelle Emerging from the Duff), 2025
collage on museum board, 11 × 14”

A favorite sight in mushroom foraging transformed in paper: the moment just before a chanterelle emerges from the forest floor, adorned with clumps of soil and leaves from coast live oak or bay laurel, making its splashy debut. Layers of hand-cut, digitally altered, printed, and re-cut leaves form the duffscape, through which a bright mushroom comically emerges. Also included: a variety of the human detritus one encounters while foraging, such as a familiar rusty spoon..

Just Like Anything, 2016
collage on Bristol, 20 × 20"

Part of a set of three meditative works exploring themes of healing, created in 2017 after the Ghost Ship Fire.

“See how high the rain falls, see the color in my hair
Hunt for golden porridge bowls, hear the paper tear
Just like anything, to sing, to sing, to sing
Is a state of mind”

—Jackson C. Frank, "Just Like Anything"

A Long Brown Ribbon, 2017
collage on Bristol, 20 × 20"

“Sadness is a radical quantity, says Elliott
Sadness is a long brown ribbon, says he
Sadness is beautiful”

—Sibylle Baier, “Says Elliott”

There Is a Vine, 2017
collage on Bristol, 20 × 20"

“There is a vine growing on my garden wall,
And it is brown and withered in the fall,
And in the spring its leaves are green and blossoms all aflame,
But, spring or fall, still I love you just the same.”

—Connie Converse, “There Is a Vine”

Arranging Wildflowers (Bob Arneson Vase), 2025
collage on museum board, 14 × 17”

In my ongoing practice of gathering wildflowers on walks and hikes (including urban ones), I take care to pay attention to the landscape: what's safe to pick, what pairs well together, and what won't invite too many insects indoors. Flowers growing side by side often make the most striking pairings, sometimes including a few borrowed from generous corporate or municipal plantings along the way.

Try to Catch Your Life as It Grows Higher, 2017
collage on Bristol board, 22 × 28”

“o curl your toes as you would by the fire,
try to catch your life as it grows higher
o close your eyes, and you'll see what I mean—
blessings in shades of where I've been”

—Bridget St. John, "Curl Your Toes"