About

Here’s the deal…

Jessica Brown is a  multidisciplinary, multimedia spectacle generator, creating disruptive & humorous work, steeped in pop culture references. She’s an artist, designer, entertainer, performer, and world builder -- curated and unscripted. 

She holds a BFA in Furniture Design from Murray State University in Kentucky, and a Masters of Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design where her graduate degree focused on creating sustainable closed loop food systems. 

Formerly a Toy Designer and Project Manager at Hasbro, she spent those years delivering best-in-class product development, executing against a robust toy & entertainment licensed portfolio. She is proud to say that her products have been enjoyed by millions of children and adults alike.

Now an Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at RISD, she interprets the profession through a performative and emotional lens, teaching classes like Design & Activism, ArtTwerking: The Experience of Design, and Toy Design: Playing with Purpose.  In the classroom, she uses decolonizing and community building methodologies to engage her students and prioritizes cultural competency, community engagement, teamwork and good citizenry as pillars for successful learning in the classroom. 

In her own multidisciplinary work, she creates flexible environments that facilitates an inclusive space to explore, reflect, & discuss the challenges of social justice concerns in the US- including race politics, class, gender and overlays her own cultural commentary. 

She is very active in the local Providence community, formerly a commissioner on the board of Art Culture and Tourism, and the Providence After School Alliance.  She is a working artist in the Nicholson File Building in the Valley Arts District of Olneyville, and has collaborations with the Department of Parks Conservatory, PVD fest, The Avenue Concept, As220, Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts and the Met School.

When she is not teaching, she is the leader of a womxn’s activist and party band, Clam Jam Brass Band, a trumpet player in the Extraordinary Rendition Brass Band, Host of Soul Bingo, a bingo dance party influence by Soul Train, organizer of Today’s Special, creating pop-up experiences and art works in underutilized spaces around Providence, and always ready to empower you by showing you a DIY low cost solution .