No. TWO

JORDAN RAMSEY ISMAIEL

Ismaiel Am I supposed to just share my hot takes?

Brooks You may absolutely do that.

Ismaiel Great! [laughs]

Brooks The original premise of this project was to talk about the subject’s practice and life and through the lens of things that they love: art, film, food, travel, literature, etc. None of the conversations have been that rigid, though. I prefer it as it has developed, organically.

Ismaiel Ok, so not just hot takes. [laughs]

Brooks Well, maybe not only hot takes. [laughs] Let’s talk about things you love.

Ismaiel I love a lot of things. I love myself. I love looking in the mirror.

Brooks As you should. This is a great way to begin, especially since, as far as I know, all of your work involves self-portraiture.

Ismaiel Yes. Wait, are we starting? I need you to give me like an official start, like Jordan, we're starting now.

Brooks Jordan, we’re starting now.

Ismaiel Oh, okay!

Brooks What else do you love?

Ismaiel I really like simple things. I like painting and reading and listening to music. I like sitting in contemplation.

Brooks What are you contemplating?

Ismaiel Sometimes it's not even anything at all. I like to stare off into space and just let my mind wander. It's not always about anything concrete, like I'll go through a lot of thoughts very quickly, sporadically. I do that in the studio often, but I also do that in conversations, which sounds bad, but it helps me listen. I think it comes from not really being able to maintain eye contact. Eye contact can be such an important part of a conversation, but I’m not able to do it, so I really focus on listening.

Brooks That sounds familiar. I think a lot of artists’ minds work that way. We are often thinking about so many different things simultaneously, and taking in so much.

Ismaiel Yes.

Brooks Why do you think eye contact is so hard for you to maintain?

Ismaiel I had a friend in undergrad who told me that it was a trauma response.

Brooks I agree with that assessment.

Ismaiel I never wanted to unpack that, so I just let that sit aside. I do think me not being able to maintain eye contact might stem from personal experiences—particularly in my early childhood—but it has become so habitual. I have to remind myself to maintain eye contact with people when we're having conversations, and I get nervous. It's easier for me to look away. It just feels easier, like if you don't see it, it's not actually happening or you don't have to take in the emotions that someone is expressing through facial expressions. It’s hard for me, especially in tough conversations.

Brooks It's a way of hiding.

Ismaiel I guess so.

Brooks When you’re involved in a conversation with someone you are a captive audience, a captive participant. Perhaps not looking is a way of making sure that you have an escape hatch. You’re ensuring that you are able to remove yourself if you need to.

Ismaiel Yeah, yeah. Also, in much the same way that I don't want to access someone else, I don't want people to access me. There's a vice versa relationship involved with maintaining eye contact where the individual or individuals that you're with are able to access how you feel by watching your eyes, and that's not something that I always want to give away. All of that makes me very anxious and very nervous. I love the sense of making myself smaller or closing myself off.

Brooks I understand that.

Ismaiel People are constantly asking me like are you okay, what is happening, what are you thinking about? It’s as though a part of myself shuts off, and I’m just perceiving, just witnessing, like a fly on the wall.

Brooks That’s all a part of some defense mechanism.

Ismaiel Yes.

Brooks And yet…your work is all about you. In your paintings, you present yourself, you give yourself. Not only are you allowing yourself to be seen, you’re insisting that people see you. And there is eye contact in your work.

Ismaiel Yes, it’s very different in my work. I feel like the self-portrait me or the me that is presented in my practice is maybe the me that I’m searching for. But really, the self-portraiture is about a relationship with myself rather than with the viewer.

Brooks Ultimately, we have to make the work for ourselves, don’t we?

Ismaiel Yes. As far as thinking about my painting and drawing practices and how my self-portraits always maintain eye contact with the viewer…I want to make space for that conversation, but it's not one that is my priority when I’m working in the studio. I think that the viewer, after carefully looking at my work, is able to take that feeling away with them. My practice isn't trying to convey anything to the viewer. I don't have a clear message through the paint that says like this is what you're seeing, this is what you take away, this is what you feel.

Brooks But you know the viewer is trying to understand, trying to see.

Ismaiel Yes, but there is no message that is spelled out. I think, for the viewer, there is always a piece that is missing, and that piece is the relationship I have with my own work.

Brooks And that piece will always be missing?

Ismaiel Yes. This is something that I'm often talking about in lectures or in interviews and conversations. We often frame work in the studio around the relationship with the viewer and we’re always taking into account what does the viewer pick up or what does the viewer think or what are their conclusions after looking at the work. I make space for that, but I think that we also need to acknowledge that the first viewer or the first witness to a work in the studio is the artist. The first viewer is yourself. That, for me, is the priority.

Brooks Making work for other people seems a dangerous path on which to tread.

Ismaiel Exactly. And it's not that the work is self-serving or comes out of a narcissistic place, but I feel like the studio is a space where I’m able to show up for myself. Painting gives me the ability to gain full access to myself; it’s a very introspective relationship and because of that, there’s so much vulnerability. There’s so much contained in the work and in the practice that by showing the work I feel as though I give the viewer a facet of myself and with that maybe they have enough clues to start putting together pieces of the puzzle. But the work’s real intention is to support me and to help resolve my feelings of loss or to explore a lack of something.

Brooks That resonates with me. I am, of course, conscious and hopeful that the work will be seen by other people, but I never make any decisions based on what I think people are going to like. I have to make the work I want to make, because this or that interests or intrigues me, or I want to explore something.

Ismaiel Exactly.

Brooks There is such a long and rich tradition of self-portraiture. Do you think about how your work relates to art history?

Ismaiel Definitely. I think I arrived at self-portraiture as a means to enter a conversation in contemporary figurative painting that I really wanted to be a part of but didn't feel like I had the life experiences necessary to participate in that conversation. My practice has become kind of an assimilation, too, thinking about historical painters from the canon. There's such a rich tradition of self-portraiture and the larger genre of portrait painting; we think about artists like Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Frida Kahlo, Sargent, Alice Neel. I think a lot of painters were or are interested in a kind of recording of their community or wanted to narrate a story through the practice of figuration, but sometimes you are a part of that story. What does it mean to focus on yourself? I think about painters who've maintained a large self-portrait practice as a means to continue figuration when there isn't someone else in the studio to serve as the subject or there isn't another person in their life who can serve as subject, or maybe it's the fact that there’s a need to fill this gap in the biography of their life. Self-portraiture comes in in those moments as an acknowledgement that they are a part of this, to say that they are also here, that they're still present in the studio. I think about those painters as really laying the foundations for my work.

Brooks I see.

Ismaiel I also think about how self-portraiture now is a very personally political act, especially in relation to the art historical canon. Portrait painting was used as a means to promote and show the importance or the perceived importance and wealth and stature of individuals. In our society, portrait painting has always been in line with capitalism and is always in line with bureaucracy. That’s just one of its functions, historically. I think about what to do with that in the studio; it’s really important to me. I also arrive at self-portraiture as a way to engage with those conversations around power and authorship. As artist and subject, I'm able to give myself this agency, this autonomy through painting where I'm able to say that my image, my life, and my own narration is just as valuable.

Brooks You're not asking someone else's permission to join the conversation. You’re saying no, I'm joining, here I am, look out.

Ismaiel Exactly. For so long, I didn't have any images that I was looking at from other painters that made me feel as though I could see myself in them.

Brooks Did you feel that way as a Queer person, as a non-binary person, as a person whose background could be seen by the mainstream as other?

Ismaiel Yeah. I often encounter portraiture and I don't see any Queer, gender-nonconforming, brown, fat individuals who are just like being in the world. I think because of that, I started to understand my practice as one that was…kind of like autotheory: because no one else is theorizing the life that you have, you assume the responsibility of trying to understand the things that you are experiencing. You are the witness, you are the receiver of such experiences, but you also try to assume an objective position when you are theorizing what that experience does or what it has the potential to do going forward. I feel like that is what my practice is. It’s not only cataloging my life and just sharing what has happened in my life, but it’s also using my practice as a means to support a kind of idealized future that I want for myself. It is a way of addressing feelings of a lack of certain things in my life. I think painting has the ability to resolve  some of that or it allows me to visualize seeing myself in situations and spaces where there's a kind of contentedness, or a comfort, or a presentness where individuals are being held and made to feel safe.

Brooks That makes a lot of sense when I think about your work.

Ismaiel I think, too, about the ethics and morals around figuration. I often understand figurative painting through the verbiage of photography and think about how photography stems out of the practice of painting…like the entire medium stems out of painting. There are contemporary photographers who talk about the fact that the making of the picture and the consideration of the picture plane and composition comes out of painting. If we think about the conversation around photography and its verbiage of violence, you know, that we're taking the picture, we're capturing the picture, we're shooting the picture, I believe that we also are implying that those same actions of violence exist within painting. We need to contend with the fact that when a figurative painter has someone else in the room or invites someone else into the room, there's a kind of a taking of autonomy, a taking of agency. There’s a kind of ownership that happens in the painting of someone's image. If that kind of relationship exists between the subject and the painter, then what does it mean when I assume the role of being not only the painter, but also being the subject? It is by assuming both of those roles that allows me to feel this true sense of agency.

Brooks What kind of responses have you've gotten to your work? I’m curious about general responses, but I am particularly curious about responses from other people who might be Queer or gender-nonconforming or, to use the word you used, fat?

Ismaiel Generally, I feel like the responses are positive when people encounter my work or talk about my work. I also feel that because the images that I'm making are so rooted in some pretty hard things I've experienced in my life, people feel as though they don't have the ability to fully critique the paintings or to fully express how they feel about the paintings.

BrooksDo you think people are being overly sensitive when talking about or critiquing the work?

Ismaiel Yeah. I feel that there's a lot of sensitivity around the work. I think about the conversations I was having in school when it was obviously very challenging for people to talk about my work. But did my peers have enough information? Were they able to really enter the conversation on their own terms and with full energy in order to actually do the work of critiquing? I know they took things away from the work, but there were things they didn’t say out of either a political correctness or a sensitivity towards what I was sharing. I'm not that forthcoming about the experiences that I’ve had in my personal life, which is what those paintings are about, or what those paintings are in response to, but I think the paintings hold those experiences, like they are actual containers for those experiences. Sometimes the containers are see through and you're able to read the image, you're able to read the painting in such a way that those things are felt by the viewer.

Brooks This is, I think, the power of art and the power of being an artist. You have taken things that were difficult or traumatic experiences and put them into paintings, forcing—or maybe that is the wrong word—asking people to confront them, even if they don’t want to. And because of certain qualities you possess related to your identity, your ethnicity, your body, people may be reluctant to be critical.

Ismaiel Yes. When I’m having conversations about my work with people, they try really hard to sum up a response, but they’re often not able to, or the feedback is lacking. I think some of it comes from the fact that they're really not able to swallow what it is that I'm presenting, whether that be my body, or the kind of images that I'm making, or the narration or the plot around the work. It's too much for them, and it's easier for them not to hear the hard thing.

Brooks Yes.

Ismaiel It has made me want to continue pushing the envelope in those conversations. It’s not that I want to make anyone feel uncomfortable but I like to challenge my audience. For a long time, a lot of my audience was my peers in school, and I wanted to challenge them. We had very different experiences while in school. We had very different experiences growing up and we have very different experiences moving through life. For the most part, in my late adolescence and early adulthood, I maintained this position of being the kind of token marginalized individual in the room or in the space or in school.

Brooks Living in Nebraska.

Ismaiel Yeah, living in Nebraska, especially rural Nebraska for a long time. I was really the only one having those experiences that I'm addressing in the work. There was no one around me who could really fully understand what it was that was happening to me, and I think that's ultimately where the work comes in. Through painting, I'm able to have a conversation with myself and I'm able to…I’m not therapizing myself, but what I am doing is thinking about painting as this action of radical self-care where I'm able to show up for myself in such a way that there's a kind of…not necessarily an ease, but an ability to traverse these conversations that are quite complex. Painting gives me the ability to digest the things that are happening to me and around me.

Brooks Yes it does.

Ismaiel Jennifer Packer talks about this, that painting affords you the ability to take in things that are hard.

Brooks If you're willing to do that.

Ismaiel Yes

Brooks Not every artist is willing to do that.

Ismaiel Right.

Brooks You are making work that only you can make. It really is quite evident. That's not just because you’re using only yourself as the subject, but it's also the reasons why you're making the work and what you're making the work about.

Ismaiel Thank you.

Brooks In hearing you talk about peoples’ uncertain or uncomfortable responses to the work, it reminds me that often this is a sign that you’ve made good work. Impactful work. You’re not making work with the specific intention to make people uncomfortable, you’re simply sharing yourself and your experiences, and if that alone makes people uncomfortable, perhaps there is something they haven’t confronted. You’re making work that says something about existence. People may decide they don’t want to live with a work, but if they keep looking at it and then look away and then look back, you’ve made something memorable.

Ismaiel Yeah, absolutely. I think that's running in the back of every artist's mind when they're in the studio. Maybe one of the facets of successful work is that it allows for a real kind of questioning. That is something that I do remind myself while I'm in the studio. I think it's okay to acknowledge that as a painter or as an artist there are decisions that we consciously make that position the work to go in a certain successful direction. It’s not my priority in the studio—it’s more like a flash—but we can make space for that.  Really, I would like the success of a work to be affirmed after the making of it. I want to trust myself to make the right decisions in the moment and have people respond in a positive way later.

Brooks I don't think you can make work self-consciously thinking oh, this is great, and this is going to do this. There are, thankfully, moments of clarity that come perhaps when you step back from the painting and you're considering how to move forward. Maybe you have a flash of something, but it's not comprehensive. I think the mind has to be both present and not present when you're working.

Ismaiel Absolutely.

Brooks Last spring, you graduated from the University of Iowa.

Ismaiel Yes, in May of 2024, with an MFA in painting and drawing.

Brooks And since then you have moved…

Ismaiel Yes, I was in a three year program that was maybe too long. After graduating I moved back to Hastings.

Brooks Hastings, Nebraska, where you grew up.

Ismaiel Yes. Since then, I started a position at a school in Omaha and so I have been bouncing back and forth between Omaha and Hastings, which is the place that my family and I moved to from D.C. when I was fifteen.

Brooks Are you still working at Walmart?

Ismaiel John, I don't work at Walmart anymore. Oh my goodness!

Brooks But you did?

Ismaiel Yes.

Brooks I bring it up to highlight how hard it is to be an artist. There are so many things artists do in order to keep making work.

Ismaiel Yeah. It’s true. While I was finishing up grad school, I felt like I was doing all the right things. I was dedicating time and space to the studio. I was submitting applications not only for teaching positions, but also for fellowships, for grants, for residencies, for jobs related to the studio, jobs in the arts sector. I started nearing my graduating time and I had really had no luck. I kept a spreadsheet and applied to all these year-long residency programs and they started to trickle in with their notifications and one after the other and it was no, no, no every single time. And, you know, they say there is that statistic that for every so many nos you get, like you'll get one yes and it didn't seem like that was happening to me. In that moment, the plan that I had made for myself post grad school quickly dissipated. I had envisioned moving to New York and making it as some young hotshot, big time artist, and unfortunately, that is a pipe dream that has yet to come to fruition. Eventually, I settled on moving back to Nebraska and thought that I would move directly to Omaha, but that didn't happen either. I ended up moving back in with my parents and applied for jobs that whole summer. I was not getting any responses or I was getting nos, and so I just started applying to everything, any job on like LinkedIn or Indeed or whatever job posting site exists now. I got my first yes, and it was from Walmart. And, of course, I want to preface this by saying that there's absolutely nothing wrong with working at Walmart, but working at Walmart wasn't necessarily something that I had envisioned for myself and I think it's okay to be honest about that. After seven years of school, I didn't envision myself bagging groceries and putting them in the trunks of peoples’ cars. I thought life would be different, but that's the reality that I was in. I was living at home and I worked at Walmart.

Brooks What exactly did you do?

Ismaiel I worked in the online grocery order fulfillment department. Employees assumed one of three different roles, either shopping for people, where you received their orders and would, through a very complex system, go through the store and put items in these big baskets, or you were sorting those baskets once they came into the back room, or you were putting orders together at the very end and then bringing them out to people in the parking lot once they'd parked their cars and checked in. I worked there full time, and it felt like every day. I got two days off a week, but because of the way our schedules were structured, you very rarely got two days off in a row. If you said that you had full availability then you would get maybe like a Tuesday off and then one day over the weekend, and I often got like a Tuesday and a Saturday.

Brooks Yikes.

Ismaiel Yeah. It consumed my life. While I was working there, I did maintain a studio space. I was renting out this office space in Hastings in this old medical building, but it was pretty dilapidated. It had very little like access to water; I was washing brushes in the hallway bathroom sink, which was never working. I had no heat in my studio and it was like December and the thermostat was reading forty degrees inside in my studio while I was trying to paint. I tried working as much as I could, but I just felt like I couldn't do it. I had no energy to muster to get to the studio as much as I wanted to  and it really took a toll on me mentally. Life was not going how I wanted it to go. None of it was adding up for me and I really started to question if I had made the right decisions, if I was working hard enough. You know, you think sometimes maybe if I just worked harder then things would be different. You have to work hard, but I also think things just happen.

Brooks Yes, both things are true.

Ismaiel While I was working at Walmart, I was still applying to jobs and eventually got to the point where I was just cold emailing schools in the central and eastern Nebraska region to see if they had any open adjunct positions. Fortunately, someone had left a position at the University of Nebraska at Omaha at the same time I had sent an email, so I was granted an adjunct instructor position in The School of the Arts.

Brooks Congratulations!

Ismaiel Thank you. In the spring I started teaching foundations courses.

Brooks Wonderful.

Ismaiel I worked at Walmart for four months, but it felt like a lifetime. I was also working there throughout the busy holiday season and I asked for overtime all the time just to save money. I'd pull ten hour shifts or twelve hour shifts. One time I was there for fifteen hours. I asked for more hours, and they were so flexible. It was actually a really nice job to have. It might be quite odd for people to hear this, but I feel like my supervisors at Walmart were actually the first people to really respect me just as a person.

Brooks Wow. Tell me more.

Ismaiel I think it was because there are no expectations of you when you're in that space, or I felt like the expectations of me while I was working at Walmart were not the same kinds of expectations that I had of myself and that others had of me while I was in school or in the studio. I didn't feel like there was this fear of being the subject of critique, either with my work or with me personally. I could just come in and do the work and leave and it didn't affect me. It didn't have this hold on me as soon as I walked out the door. It's also humbling, honestly. You know, you talk a really big game and then all of a sudden you're the one that's working at Walmart and bagging groceries. I think it gave me a lot of perspective and I learned about myself in a very different way. It reminded me of just how lucky I really am. I was so incredibly lucky that I was in a position where I was able to put myself through school and so incredibly lucky that I was able to go to school to learn how to paint and to maintain a studio practice. A lot of people don't get that kind of opportunity. They don't get that kind of space in order to invest in themselves in that way. For almost seven years, I was putting myself in a situation where I made my own thoughts the priority and that just isn't the case for everyone. And, I think that rather than focusing on what is lacking or questioning what do I really want out of life and out of a career, reminding myself that this is what's right in front of you, Jordan, and that can be enough if you let it be enough.

Brooks So, when you began at Walmart or when you were looking for jobs, you were questioning your choices that you made with your education, but by the end of the experience with that job, you reaffirmed you’d made the right choices.

Ismaiel Yeah, and I wasn't only questioning what I went to school for, but I was also questioning where I went to school, how I was doing in those programs, you know? Did I make all the connections that I should have? Did I have all the studio visits? Did I follow up with people in the ways that I should have? Did I market myself in the best way? Did I check all the boxes for what is essentially capitalism? You can check the boxes all day long, but sometimes life just has other plans for you.

Brooks The path is never linear and there are no guarantees.

Ismaiel Absolutely.

Brooks You can do everything you think is right and something still may not happen, but you also don't know how things add up because you’re not yet at the end.

Ismaiel Yeah. I also like to think of it being a matter of pacing myself. Life sometimes has a funny way of telling you when to slow the fuck down and when to speed up and when to stop. I think life was telling me in that moment Jordan, so much has happened to you in these past three years. You just need to slow down.

Brooks That’s a good lesson.

Ismaiel Yeah. The good and the bad, all of it.

Brooks And right now you're at the Elizabeth Murray Residency.

Ismaiel Yes, I am. I’m in the first session of the 2025 Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency Program, which is in Washington County, New York, right outside of Granville. It’s very close to the New York / Vermont border in the upstate region. It’s so beautiful. The residency was created as a partnership between the Murray / Holman family and an arts organization in Troy, New York called Collar Works.

Brooks And what are you working on?

Ismaiel Right now in the studio I'm doing two kinds of drawings where I'm constructing these photo collages that I've been making to then make these very small, meticulous drawings on paper, using graphite pencils and charcoal, where I'm kind of hunched over the paper, sitting at a desk. And I've also been working on these more abstract drawings where I am practicing haptic drawing, or haptic mark making, where you go through this process of feeling your way through the drawing, kind of like a blind contour line drawing. Haptic drawing as a practice stems out of psychosomatic therapy as a method for patients to gain a sense of agency, and to be able to regain a sense of trust with themselves when having anxiety about touch or being touched. That really excited me when I learned about it. What does it mean to really feel your way through a drawing? In these haptic drawings, I tape the paper to the wall and give myself roughly ten minutes, but I haven’t put any real solid parameters on them. I’ve been using them as the foundation for these what seem to me to be abstracted self-portraits where I make really quick decisions on the surface. I go at them with a lot of drawing material.

Brooks How long are you there?

Ismaiel It's a two week residency and I've been here for a week already.

Brooks And then you're back to Nebraska.

Ismaiel After the residency ends I’m going to float around the east coast for two seconds to visit some friends. Then I'll be back to Nebraska and, you know, kind of going through the rest of the summer and doing what I can back in Nebraska to not only prepare for the school year but to set up what my friends and I have been calling my stabilizing year. I’m trying to regain a sense of security and to bounce back a little bit.

Brooks That's wonderful. You’re beginning your professional life.

Ismaiel Yes. She's a little bit too professional for me. [laughs] Like, can I get this just a little bit more easily? [laughs]

Brooks It’s been a long time coming. It will be both easy and hard.

Ismaiel Probably so.

BrooksThinking back to your younger days, how did you come to art a kid? You moved to Nebraska when you were fifteen, but were you exposed to art in D.C. before that?

Ismaiel I was really fortunate. The school system that we were in when we were living in D.C., more specifically in Northern Virginia, took a lot of field trips to different institutions. I remember going to the National Portrait Gallery when I was in the sixth grade. That was the first time I saw a John Singer Sargent painting and I was like oh, that's really cool. How else do you respond to a painting when you're in sixth grade? I was eleven, so I was just enamored with it all.

Brooks Was it the imagery? Was it the materials? What was it?

Ismaiel I think it was just the fact that it was just a good painting. I recognized it as something that I should look at and pay attention to and, I thought it was maybe so typical of a teacher to say this, but my teacher pointed at me and said Jordan, one day you're gonna do this, one day you're gonna be here.

Brooks How wonderful.

Ismaiel I think that came out of like oh, Jordan really likes to draw, Jordan really likes art, and so the idea of just saying this to a kid in order to have them feel good about their interest.

Brooks But still, it’s a powerful thing to hear.

Ismaiel It is. I’ve been thinking about that recently and kind of holding on to that again. I hadn't thought of that conversation in a really long time. Having that kind of resurface was really nice for me. You know, that's still a possibility in my life, or maybe it’s an aspiration now.

Brooks Certainly.

Ismaiel When I was growing up, my parents weren't not supportive, but they always understood art making to be like a hobby and, you know, not a very serious one at that. So it was just a novel thing that I had the ability to draw in such a way. I thought of it in the same way. People responded to my skills; saying oh you're a really good artist, you can draw but actually, in retrospect, I was twelve and got good at copying images that I saw on the internet. So no, I wasn't an artist at twelve, but I definitely had an interest in drawing. I didn't become serious about going to school for art until I was in undergrad. I entered undergrad with this idea that art was gonna be secondary, that having a studio practice was going to be this kind of hobby or this thing in the background and that I would go to school in order to one day enter a career field that is a little bit more typical, a little bit more lucrative.

Brooks Such as?

Ismaiel You know, being a lawyer or whatever. I started out going to school not only as a studio art major but also a biology major. That quickly failed for me. I failed biolab in my first semester and I'm on a permanent break from that. [laughs] I had a conversation with my biology professor where I was like, I'm actually gonna take a break from biology right now, but I'll come back to it. I’ve yet to do that. [laughs]

Brooks [laughs] Well, one day you might. Who knows.

Ismaiel Maybe. It was really while I was an undergrad that I started to learn about painting, that I started to learn about contemporary art making. I had two really, really phenomenal professors in undergrad.

Brooks At Hastings College.

Ismaiel Yes. I commuted one whole mile to campus in order to go to school. I just ended up at Hastings College. It was the cheapest option for me. I was able to live at home and take classes, do what I needed to do. But it was while I was there that I was presented with this idea that having a career as an artist is possible and, you know, this is what it takes to get there, these are the steps that one traverses or navigates in order to make this a reality, and it was only because of the faculty that I had become really serious about it. That feels recent still. It feels like yesterday, but in reality, that was eight years ago. I feel like my practice, my actual independent studio practice, is still really in its infancy. There’s nothing resolved yet. It feels like a foundation. If I'm comparing myself to my colleagues or my peers or people in the “art world,” I haven't been doing this for very long with this level of inquiry and critical thinking.

Brooks But you found some community at Hastings.

Ismaiel Well, I had some support from the faculty but aside from them and a couple of really great peers, I felt really isolated. I didn't feel understood. I felt some naïve, cringy, teenage angst or young adult angst. I didn't feel understood and the choices that I was making for myself…I really had to trust myself to stick to them in spite of everything that I was hearing around me.

Brooks Was the isolation of a personal nature or more about what youwere interested in as an artist?

Ismaiel It was more art in general. Later on I started having conversations with my parents specifically about the self-portraiture in my practice. They just don't like it. They're not exactly fond of my work. Maybe I would hope for them to be, but that's fine.

Brooks I don't care who you are—no offense to any parents—you can't make work to please your parents.

Ismaiel Exactly.

Brooks It’s understandable, though, to long for some kind of approval.

Ismaiel Yes. When I was a kid and we were living in northern Virginia, I asked them if they could take me to the Hirshhorn Museum in D.C. I remember begging them to take me there and we walked in to the museum and were there for like all of ten minutes and I remember them being like what the fuck is this? And then they made me feel bad for wanting to be there and we walked out, and they told me that it was a waste of time.

Brooks Oh.

Ismaiel I carried that with me. I didn't want anything that I did to be a waste of time. I wanted all of it to matter and I think I’m still searching for that. Even though I really feel independent, like I'm my own person, I still feel as their child I'm still searching for their affirmation that I've made the right decision in wanting to become an artist. It was only very recently that I actually started calling myself an artist. I felt that was a title that I had to earn and that it takes serious work to get there.

Brooks It does!

Ismaiel I wanted that, to be that serious, to have that seriousness, to have that level of being and doing. And I think because of the conversations that were happening around me, it really forced me to focus on that. The title and like the granting of that title was really at the forefront of my aspiration.

Brooks Do you remember what was showing at the Hirshhorn when you went with your parents?

Ismaiel Oh God, I don't even remember. It was some video work that was being projected onto the wall. It was this video of a drummer and the person is drumming pretty vigorously and then their head explodes. I think it's like a very like crude video montage where you see the figure's head quickly turn into a balloon that pops and that simulates the explosion of the head. I remember that being the one work that we stopped at and they watched it, and it was very quick and they were like what the fuck is this? I felt bad, I felt like I was being blamed for all of the actions of art that have ever happened. I didn't understand what was going on or what was happening, or even like what I was seeing.

Brooks How old were you?

Ismaiel I was fourteen.

Brooks It’s very unfair to be made to feel responsible for all of art at any age, let alone at fourteen!

Ismaiel Yes.

Brooks I’m glad you persevered. I’m glad you fought for what you wanted.

Ismaiel I think I’m still trying to.

Other Swans Conversation No. Seven

Jordan Ramsey Ismaiel (they/them) (b. 1999, Reston, Virginia) is a painter and drawer living and working in between Hastings and Omaha, Nebraska. Having moved to the rural Midwest at the age of 15 from Washington D.C., their practice examines desire, longing, and emotional safety through processes of self-portraiture and composite imagery; staging moments of intimacy through self-provided partnership that are contextualized by their experiences living in the ‘Great Plains.’ Their work was included in “Meet Me in the Middle of Nowhere,” curated by Kyle Herrington, at the Hessel Museum of Art with the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in New York; and featured in GAYLETTER Magazine by Tyler Akers. They received a BA in Studio Art and Philosophy & Religion from Hastings College, and both an MA and MFA in Painting & Drawing from the University of Iowa where they were a recipient of the 2021-22 Iowa Arts Fellowship. More recently, Ismaiel is a recipient of a 2025 Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship; and has been awarded a solo exhibition with the council's Fred Simon Gallery in Omaha.