Jesse Ray Sims

Jesse Ray Sims is a Fine artist - illustrator. He works primarily in acrylics and also mixed media on paper. He also does architectural illustration and graphic design commissions out of his home studio. His wife Jennifer Sims is an elementary art teacher in Hart County and they have five-year-old son, Draven. Jesse's work reflects his experiences as an architectural draftsman and his work in manufacturing as a CNC programmer. He has won several awards in juried exhibitions and an Al Smith Fellowship recipient. He has shown work in several group and invitational exhibitions and has work in galleries in Kentucky and Florida. His work is in several private and corporate collections. He has done several presentations and projects with the students in his wife's school system, including a project combining science, design and physics that involves the students building model rockets and successfully flying and recovering them. This project keeps getting bigger and he hopes to get kids at the high school level involved with the Team America Challenge, a competition sponsored by NASA.

Exploring Visual Communications

Goal: To explain the process of communicating ideas and its effects on the arts, design and architecture.

1. Start with discussions on what is visual communication. Explain how art and architecture starts with an idea or philosophy. Give examples of ideas or philosophies of artists, designers and architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Peit Mondrian and my own ideas. Explain the process of taking these ideas and turning them into visual expressions.
    
2. Get the students involved with the process by having them write down ideas that would influence them in designing either architecture, or creating art. Once they have some ideas written they will create some sketches to help build on for their final piece. the final project can be either a painting or schematics for a structure such as a home or even a planned city. Students will learn ways to better convey their ideas visually by using tools like symbolism or composition in their work.
    
3. Start working on the final piece. Develop a finished work of art or proposal schematic and illustration for an architectural structure. If a student wanted they could incorporate both art and architecture in their ideas.
    
4. Discuss finished works. Have the students critic each other work so the student will learn to ask themselves "does this line make sense here, or is this what I am trying to say."

This project can be fitted to meet the needs of short or longer residencies. Longer residencies will allow time for the students to create both an architectural drawing and a fine art piece along with writing components. It is the artists wish to make the students understand that painting is not just painting, building is just not building. There is an artistic process to create, whether it be art, architecture, design, and even business. To do this successfully we must be able to use knowledge, (reading, writing, math, science and arts and humanities). The greatest accomplishments in history started with ideas and cultures are defined through their arts, architecture and politics.