Spur of the Moment with Of-the-Moment Artist Jasmine Little

Antics and Escapades from L.A.'s rising art star

By Angela Lu

Jasmine Little, age 24 and one of the fastest rising stars of the L.A. art scene, is broke and about to be evicted. A few months ago, she found herself tucked in a little recess of the hipster bar Silverlake Lounge in Silverlake, Calif., an artsy, low-income suburb of Los Angeles, drawing tattoos on her friends' arms with colored sharpies for a buck--literally.

There's a downtrodden, apathetic look on her face. Her plump red lips seem to naturally form into a pout. Underneath a faded black mini skirt, her green stockings are torn in multiple places and her posture looks as crooked as Granny's. Her look? Gutter punk deflated.

Impossible would it be for a stranger to surmise that her paintings have been lauded by art world major leaguers such as a CalArts acting dean, renowned painters Hubert Schmalix and Roger Herman, local gallery owners like Tom Jancar, and L.A. Weekly art critic Doug Harvey, who hand-picked her work to be displayed alongside those of legends like Ed Moses and David Hockney in L.A. Weekly's 2007 Biennial early in 2008. She also recently earned a BFA from UCLA in art, but tonight, she looks like she's on her last leg.

The four figures she has earned on each of her sold paintings have been spent but she has willfully chosen to remain unemployed. "I just don't see the point of getting a full-time job," she reveals in the backlot of the bar. "I'm hopeful because I hear the eviction process could take up to six months." In general, Little's approach to life and work can be summed up as whatever happens, happens.

This is who Jasmine Little is—spur of the moment and of the moment. She's an of-the-moment L.A. artist who has experienced an unusual amount of success at a young age, having been exhibited in eight shows within a year and a half of graduating from university. And she's a spur-of-the-moment artist because she concerns herself with little more than the present. This casual attitude dominates her artwork as well.

Most of her paintings are still lifes, depictions of inanimate objects or inside jokes amongst artist friends. Her goals are far from lofty. "I paint for myself and my friends," she says. "It's not that I am exclusively addressing them, but I have no pretentions of showing the world anything bold and new or educating anybody."

Little works solely with oil on massive canvasses that are generally seven by nine feet tall. Bold, lively colors jump off her paintings in geometric, funky shapes with generous shading to portray indoor scenes such as an empty café or a group of red objects huddled together. Little's works are sometimes even slightly cartoonish, which is fitting for the oftentimes playful subject matter of her paintings.

For her co-exhibition this past September at Jancar Gallery with renowned Austrian painter Schmalix, she created a piece called "Hubert's Studio," which poked fun at the frequency with which Schmalix paints female nudes by portraying a whole group of female nudes standing, lying, and painting around a single room.

Antics and her ironic sense of humor don't just stop at her paintings though. She named her first off campus exhibition "No Art Today," which she curated herself in May 2007. She has also worn "Fuck This Place" t-shirts to art openings.

Her process is surprisingly simple and casual as well. "Typically I will watch TV for three weeks straight, then go buy a bunch of materials, build stretchers, stretch the canvas, prime the surface, and then start painting," she said. "I think about what I am going to paint while going to the process of preparing. It takes like a day to get ready to start, so that a good amount of time to get inspired by whatever."

At the moment, there is a major disparity between Jasmine Little's professional and personal life. Professionally, she seems to be at the top of her game. Personally, she may be homeless within a few months, though she says she is currently applying to Yale for graduate school.

"There comes a point when your life solidifies like a jar of play-doh left open," she said. "You can't really change the way your life is going. Mine happens to include painting and not much else, so I am extremely dedicated. I don't have long-term goals. I guess we will just see what happens."