Yessica Jimenez illustrations
Yessica Jimenez is a visual artist and illustrator who creates under the brand Xeroine Illustration. Born and raised in Milwaukee, she incorporates different aspects of her identity into her art whether it encompasses her being Chicana, queerness, or spirituality among other things. Currently through her website she sells prints and wearables such as shirts and resin earrings, as well as accessories such as pillows, coffee mugs, phone cases and stickers.
Jimenez has been making art for as long as she can remember, she explains.
“When I was younger, my sister Nancy liked art and she was really good at drawing. She and I are eight and a half years apart, so when I was little and she was a teenager she’d give me paper scraps, and that’s honestly how it all started. I remember I used to draw on the back of my homework when I went to UCC, and they’d always return it and tell my parents, but I wouldn’t understand what the problem was (laughs).”
Jimenez went to all art schools from middle school and beyond, including Lincoln Center for the Arts and DIAL (which no longer exists). She graduated from MIAD in 2014 and that summer was when she vended for the first time. On how she gradually found her artistic identity, Jimenez recalled, “After I graduated MIAD, I felt really lost because I focused so much on finding a style when I was in college. Because I went to school for illustration where our whole job is based on creating for other people, I tried to find a style that was appealing to others, but at the end of the day somebody’s going to hire me for a piece because they like my work.”
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“I felt I whitewashed my work while I was at MIAD because I was told by a teacher that I didn’t know how to draw white people (laughs); I think what she meant was that I didn’t have to draw that and could just draw myself and other people that look like me, but in my head I thought she meant that the majority of my clientele would be white, which is a wild thing to think. Since I’ve been finding my voice in art after I graduated, my biggest influences are women of color and finding spirituality outside of Christianity and the church.”
Jimenez primarily works in series; one of which has been her Zodiac Series that features all Women of Color representing each astrological sign and their corresponding planets, constellations, crystals and flowers. “When I first started the series,” she explained, “I’d go on Instagram and Pinterest to find inspirations and see how these signs have already been represented by other artists. The pattern was that everybody was illustrating white characters even though it isn’t just white folks that relate to these symbols. I wanted to make something that myself and my friends could relate to, so I made a point to illustrate only Brown and Black women.”
Making Something for Milwaukee
Yessica Jimenez illustrations
Another that she’s done recently has been her 414 Hood Witch Series which debuted earlier this year. Jimenez said, “I’d always wanted to make something for Milwaukee that was again relatable to myself and others because a lot of Milwaukee merch I find has imagery of being Downtown, which is cool, but I wanted to do something that I identified more with. I decided to do the four-one-four with the fingers up because I hadn’t really seen anyone do that. I did a few versions of it—the one with the jewelry and tattoos, a celestial one with constellations, and one with plants growing out of the hands (where each hand represents a different Dome from the Milwaukee Domes). When I first did them, they were just going to be prints and stickers but then people kept asking for shirts and that became a great idea—shoutout to everybody who suggested it.”
A current series that she’s working on is her 30 Piece Series to lead up to her 30th birthday. “It was a very random thought and there was really no plan for it,” Jimenez said. “I bought these bags for my prints but they’re too thick for the sleeves that I have, so I used them instead for the jewelry I’ve been making but I still had so many that I was never going to use. I decided to start making mini pieces just for the hell of it. It’s good practice for me because I’m really bad at using sketchbooks, and doing these daily small paintings really gets me going.”
As of late, Jimenez has been working with resin on wooden canvases and she’s making keychains as her latest wearables. She plans to make her own deck of playing cards next, which has been a goal of hers since college. “It’ll take longer but I think that’s my next big project,” she said.
Yessica Jimenez got accepted into the Brady Street Art Walk on August 20, so look out for her there. In the meantime, visit the Xeroine Illustration website and online shop here.
