Jessica Ferris

I'm offering you multiple high-fives. Pick any. It will be satisfying.

• Storytelling (fairytales, folk tales, and myth)• Playwriting and directing• Choreography• Event production• Ritual and bespoke rites of passage• Memoir• Metalsmithing• Fiber art (mostly when the fiber is human hair)

Speaking of pebbles, would you believe I found all of these on the same beach on the same day? Please do, it's the truth.

• dreams• pebbles• pigeons• crows• what to give that one person for whom gift-giving is stumping you

Juliana Frick leads them!

I’m a founding member of Pinecones and Portals Hiking Theater Company.

I co-produce walkabout theater in forests and parks and gardens for kids (and their grownups!). I curate and host fireside story events as Penelope Pinecone.It’s exceeeeeeeedlingly joyful.

I’m a couple of decades into co-hosting a new works reflection group.

Each member gets 20 minutes to be witnessed by the group. Members have used their turns to improvise performances, tell new scripted stories, muse on hunches or new ideas, talk about their day, or just not know what to say or do.The group observes very closely: somatic states, qualities of breath, words, shapes, rhythms, motifs, and latent propositions. We also observe our own internal changes while listening.Then whose-ever turn it was requests the sort of feedback which would be useful (including none at all) and receives reflections from the group according to their request.This work has helped me develop a deep relationship with not-knowing-as-a-grace, and it has taught me how to consciously listen on many channels at once. It has taught me how to sensitively articulate my experience of something just being born.

I participate in a Dream Circle.

Martha Crawford hosts it. The participants zoom in from all over the world, and we take turns sharing and reflecting on each other’s dreams. It is grounding like WHOAH, and absolutely lines up the tiny and the huge.

I make metal talismans.

Mostly I’m motivated by dreams, gratitude for relationships (with specific crows, specific trees, and specific beaches) and the desire to let my hands work while my mind wanders. Also the desire to send objects a little way into the future.Sometimes I’m motivated by the relationships between the different parts of my awareness. I make myself jewelry-as-mnemonics to help me remember stuff.

I make metal hair accessories.

I kept having dreams that it was time to pack up, it was time to migrate, and I had to decide on the most essential items to put in my one bag. I also kept craving a gig which would allow me to:• work flexible hours (so I could be available for other art-making)• silently• while offering something useful and beautiful• which I could produce even within the rhythms of capitalism.When it’s time to pack up and migrate, you probably won’t even need to deliberate about putting these in your bag because they will already be on your body.

I study tarot.

DANG but these images are useful!!

This is not Felix. I think this is Felix's father. Look at him, offering and receiving gifts at the threshold. The act rippling out. CROWS.

I learn about, and love, Felix the Crow.

I’m pretty sure I met Felix when he was a baby. Ask me about crows. Ask me about them.

I think it’s gonna take a couple of decades to grow together and start to cohere.
I’m just naming that I can feel it growing. If you have gobs of money and want to commission me to make it exist in the world sooner, get in touch.