KB Jones

KB Jones draws on what’s around her to respond to events with a com- pacted sense of emotion. Stuck in her apartment in New York City by the pandemic, she made paintings of Zoom meetings, pocket change, and the McDonald’s sign outside her window.

Jones traveled to Marfa by way of Midland to gauge the impact of the oil-market crash on the state’s Permian Basin region, where she has spent time painting the industrial landscape. One of the large canvases she painted while in residence renders an illustration from Alice in Bibleland (a Texas thrift-store find) stacked in between the stratigraphic layers of an oil field. Limiting her palette to ready-mixed hues from the hardware store, Jones developed a strong affinity with the surreal and minimalist art of John Wesley at Chinati. In addition to paintings, she created an installation of fabric banners that conflates references to the artist Ana Mendieta’s Silueta series with news surrounding the killing of Breonna Taylor, who also appears in silhouette. Working en plein air on the grounds at Chinati, Jones completed a series of small paintings on paper.

KB Jones (born 1979 in Huntsville, Texas; lives in New York City) re- ceived her MFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and her BA in visual art and philosophy from Columbia University. She was a SITE Santa Fe scholar in 2013 and has ex- hibited at venues indoors and out, from the Keap Fourth Community Garden in Brooklyn, to the Peter Strauss Ranch National Park near Los Angeles, to the Lemonade Stand, a mobile gallery and residency in Fairbanks, Alaska.

As part of 2020’s virtual Chinati Weekend, Jones hosted an online studio visit in the Locker Plant on Sunday, October 11. To view a recording of that visit, click here.