For sale:

I have (2) 8x10inch glossy darkroom prints of a spring-time-midtown-tulips photograph available for sale, inquire within for price.

Also available: 30x45inch archival pigment prints on matte Hahnemuhle paper. Inquire within for price. More prints available via website.

Summer availability:

Available locally and beyond, for photo commissions.

I love to collaborate on portraits, studio visits, family photos, editorial projects, commercial projects, travel, event, behind-the-scenes on photo/video sets. I sell prints of my photographs, artwork and license my photographs. Email me to discuss any of the above or request a custom PDF, amandajas4 at gmail dot com

Here is my website, recently dusted off, with a variety of new portrait work, personal work, studio visits, travel (costa rica, mendocino), behind the scenes and much more. You can always see a more recent flow of images on my instagram.

A brief selection of newer/favorites for your viewing pleasure:

As always, thank you for your support.

amanda j p

In this inquiry, I am referring to emotional integration - the acknowledging&processing of emotions/experiences, particularly hard ones, however I also find myself also wondering about the integration of positive emotions/experiences—love, joy. We often unconsciously default on processing the hard, but what does it mean to integrate the positive ? Can either take place without intention?

A lack of emotional integration can feel jarring, invasive—coming at you from the outside in. Integration can feel accepting, compassionate, from within. Some days I feel it all whirling around me(hearing Philip Glass’ Dance score) through me, other days it feels like a part of me. Some days it feels as though the world is coming at me, and other days it’s me coming to the world. Someone once described an un-integrated experience/feeling exists as an island that when brushed up on, feels as though you are thrown back there, with no bridges to connect you back to land. Integration is the building of the bridges, the ease of movement between you and the emotions/experience. (recommended reading relating to departure from existing systems, re-contextualizing the “glitch” Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russel. for the french philosophy lovers, Line of Flight by Deleuze and Guattari). There is a part of me that wants to question integration, to understand integration as erasure of the emotion its trying to integrate, to relate integration as compliance, however I remind myself this is inherently not how integration works and recognize this is a protective response. Regardless, I honor the choice to not lean into integration, everyone is the author of their own story.

Below is an un-edited list of all the responses received when I asked people on instagram “Curious what helps support you while/in integrating experiences of loss and grief and joy and love?”. In admiration of the genius curious kind intuitive people who responded.

Message or email me if you’d like to add to the list.

Warmly,

a

1. “Throwing phone in other room turning on a song and dancing my heart out for at least 2 songs or 1 on repeat and cry cry scream and try to move it move it even when the anger comes exprés”

2. “Moving my thoughts away from how I feel or what do I achieve and toward meaning outside of myself. Focus on creating or experiencing something in the world, in the here and now. I’m always thinking about my loss and my identity, I feel you, it’s frustrating, it’s amplified for artists, which means I have to try even harder to refocus that energy into doing/experiencing and away from myself. Check out Viktor Frankl if any of that resonates.”

3. “Meditating tbh!” “Meditation”

4. “Meditation and listing things I’m grateful for.”

5. “rest without apology”

6. “Cold plunge + cry !”

7. “Loads of acceptance and daydreaming of nuance”

8. “Chasing the sun with my fingers. It helps me focus on the present moment, connect with something greater, it reminds me the power of play -even with the most simple things. It’s a small dance between my hands and the sun. It keeps me grounded.”

9. “reliable friends, creating moments of joy with them as a reminder of good things being in my life already, being slow and intentional and trying to connect with body while observing while i experience intense emotions and try to remind myself i am learning and going through transformation… currently going through a big shift and when i feel grief i remember i am trying to do things in a way i havent before and it’s not meant to be easy to teach your old brain new tricks”

10. “Walking. Crying and laughing”

11. “Pilates!!!!!!”

12. “hearing/sharing fun little stories people may not have heard about the person who died”

13. “Dancing/movement. Solo.”

14. “Breath work- Breathe with Sandy YT”

15. “Dancing and gazing at the sky for long periods”

16. Painting!

17. lovingkindness meditations... ritual of any kind, can be whatever, something to return to tho.

18. “nature reading sleep friends … mushrooms … water ..”

19. “ i love when ppl just sit and listen to me .. all i need is a listening ear. Also when ppl make you a home cooked meal without u asking. Food is love”

20. Alexis smart flower essences!! For real & rose tea”

21. “10 Artists on Working, Living and Creating Through Loss” (alternative link incase first one doesn’t work)

22. “Sallie Tisdale's book A Guide for Future Corpses”

23. “Somatic practice & dream practice. and making art”

24. “Ride a bike and go to concert”

25. “Friends. Animals. Reading other people’s stories in fiction”

26. “I run and walk a lot at night, quiet aimlessly with no end point, I write a lot, I watch birds, sit in fields try to find a body of water, or call a friend I can confide in. The real heartbreak might be in the mystery of having questions I will never know the answer too and accepting that loss of not knowing while treasuring the very memories of something or someone that is no longer there”

27. “I have found some support in leaning on a couple contradictions inherent in the processes of grief/mourning. Of course, they sometimes lean on me too. Active and passive. You guide them and they guide you. The latter requires some humility but your boat may be carried to interesting places. Personal and shared, these processes are unique to you but also cosmically and comically universal.”

28. “Being deep in nature has never failed to give me perspective, hope, and peace. It’s a place where when I am alone, I’m free of superficial and unhelpful thoughts. I become curious, feel deeply held, understood and never judged. It’s a place where we can be our true selves, work through emotions without the worry of judgement. Nature holds me so deeply !!!”

29. “For me nature is a big equalizer, while grieving or supporting someone in grief, everything in me wants me stay indoors but the breeze, sun, or even harsh cold somehow serves as a lifeline, maybe a reminder i/we are part of this world, maybe related and maybe tmi but when i get panic attacks it helps looking at and feeling my hands, textures, touch also help to ground me.”

30. “The truth i still have the ability or chance to feel all of these”

31. “Music. Animation/cartoons. Friends. Nature!!!”

32. “Spending time with nature”

33. “Movement and music”

34. “ACA helps me tremendously” (Adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families)

35. “sunshine, bird song, and people i can trust to not look away when i share something emotional or hard”

36. “moving my body! herbs! journaling”

37. “Breathwork, ayahuasca, plant medicine, for loss and grief peach leaf and milky oats really help me”

38. “Intentional alone time”

39. “It is literally being outdoors everyday gardening ( that’s what I do now ) it is humbling and very rooting. When I am in love it even gets me horny :)”

40. “Nothing. Drinking. Smoking. Indulging in alone time. Enjoying music new and old. Watching TV shows and movies. Getting inspired by artists. Accepting life is always going to challenge us and being willing to adapt to changes. Realizing you want to take care of yourself, and want to help others. Reaching out for someone...Family of friend, new or old. Finding common ground. Never giving in to the feeling of the daily grind, but striving to find passion about things and working towards a greater dream.”

41. “It’s an exercise of balance and grace. Compassion towards yourself. A lot of Moving my body, but also listening to when I need to prioritize rest and time alone. Cooking rich meals also brings me a lot of joy and the sense of integration. But also allowing myself to take out or go somewhere if I don’t feel like do it it. It’s all about balance!”

42. “Crying, singing, moving my body alone and without judgement of whatever arises - letting the animal be animal”

43. “if i’m going through something difficult, I try and shift the narrative to be grateful for what I can learn about the world, myself, or others. I try and focus on learning as much as possible. through joy and love, I like to write and really describe what i’m feeling.

44. “Dogs”

45. “hawthorn and rose as an herbal infusion or tea”

46. “Rest”

47. “Journal Morning pages and taking walks, seeing friends and letting them make you laugh”

48. “swimming and walking in the woods”

49. “I just started a journal club with some friends and it's been a great way to ground myself and reflect”

50. “A cliche, but nature”

51. “ Pace! Not rushing to feel a certain way!”

52. “walks give me time & space to think, help me to get into a flow state of movement. lifting weights helps me to feel embodied & powerful, to focus on nothing but my breath & mind-body connection”

53. “Ketamine”

54. “Painting. Singing. Crying with loved ones”

55. “Cats <3<3<3”

56. “Spending time in nature. Being around trees and plants and finding beauty in the inevitable life/death cycle and practicing gratitude for the mere fact that I can be aware of being in that cycle and that presence can feel like a miracle in the face of all that is (not) there in the universe. Also knowing that every loss I have experienced has changed the course of my path to some degree, big or small. Everyone one I’ve lost, physically, spiritually, or romantically, exists as a voice inside me. As a muse guiding my path. I honor their lives by letting myself be a conduit for their values. I am but a weird amalgam of everyone who’s touched me in one way or another.”

57. “Honestly, planning early sleep, and then getting up eary has been good for Loss and grief. Knowing or having the goal that maybe the next morning it could be absolved or a bit more hidden helped. Drawing without a goal always works. I think more recently I explained to someone that happiness isn’t the opposite of sadness like water isn’t the opposite of fire. Actually had always thought that but never said it really helped with the partition. But getting older I’m more realizing that I need the bad days to know what a good one is”

58. “Running and crying at the same time”

59. “Writing. Cooking. Laying on the ground. Crying. BURNING THINGS”

Musing in the parking lot. That thing is happening where I’ve been looking at and thinking about photographs and now it’s all I can see. Everything is a photo and it’s annoying but special. The joie de vivre returns to me in waves in the form of the most mundane imagery.

In my teens and most of my twenties, I existed mostly in this space. All I could see were photographs around me. Over the years, as my field of vision expanded into other medias/mediums it would oscillate between them and in more recent years, on none of them. Expanding my world into a different professional realm that is not directly tied to art-making gives me more space to observe in a new way, but also provides me the space to pause and also through that space realize and understand just how special it is to be an artist at mind.

When I oscillate from non-art field of vision to art field-of-vision, it feels like a gift and feels like the string that connects me to purpose is plucked, vibrating. In feeling connected to my own sentient experience I then feel connected to others around me. This trained eye I devoted so much time to early on helps connect me to the spectacle of living. It is a gift and a means in which I process, reflect, interpret everything in and around me.

It is everything, a mine-forever thing, here unconditionally to keep me company, here forever in on some cosmic joke. In that profound simplicity the noise that pulls in and out around it (external elements, recognition, social media, gallery, financial gain) feels inconsequential.

While I have you here I’d also like to share that I am still open for custom print sales or commissions however I’m operating on a different turnaround time these days - Some may know so apologies if this is old news, I am almost to the end of my first year back at school, finishing my undergrad degree likely followed by a masters, in social work (i will note that custom print sales are a wonderful and greatly appreciated way to support me as a student while i make it through school in financially precarious times, email me).

It’s funny the many directions lifes winds take us, always here if you want to connect.

(trigger warning) Part of being made to feel so small through adolescence is that when you are forced to let silence shape you, fear takes up so much of that space. Speaking vulnerably about things that are not concrete or are new to me activates a part of my nervous system that has been conditioned to feel fear and danger, my body and voice are often halfway out the door in the first minute. It’s taken years to get to a point where I feel capable and equipped to turn my attention to this and find different on-going ways to re-shape this part of me. Disavowing and internalizing my own experience and feelings at the command of an abuser for over a decade nurtured an often disappearing person. This left me especially vulnerable to further harm as an adult. It’s important to state that it’s our society that helped shape, support and protect a person who could do this kind of harm and particularly to a child (there is little that is unique in this experience). The same society that has helped create and support conditions where access to healing is its own kind of privilege. If for not having access to resources over the years I don’t know that I could have reached the same place I am today. When I speak and my voice shakes now, the fear goes all the way back to kid-amanda. At 31, many of the communication pieces have been untangled and I’ve experienced a kind of self-assurance and confidence that is new to me. However, it always seems like the game where new /old pieces appear only once the ones in front of you have been seen and heard. I suspect this will always be the case but with less frequency over time. This new piece has emerged like a large rock cutting through fog, a small flat rock surfacing to the top of the swamp, a green yellow glow rising to the top. 

The aim is to be able to step into fear, vs fear stepping into me. Recently I went to a workshop led by artist and psychotherapist Julia Gladstone. It explored group-as-a-whole dynamics, “Group-as-a-whole theory posits that when individuals form a group, the resulting union becomes an entity in its own right with a sum greater than its parts”. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was curious by the prompt and trust the facilitator. “Whatever it is, it will be good for me and those around me”. Being in workshop felt like holding my nervous system in my hands, practicing willingness and consent in feeling fear and in feeling it not alone. Coalescing in the background was the possibility that this was about re-learning fear, not as fear equals bad but fear equals fear. That fear is OK and like any emotion, an informational tool. 

Being present in a space means witnessing others arrive to a moment and witnessing a moment arrive to others, myself included. In this particular space, we framed observations as our stories, the person speaking being the source of the story. For me, bolstering the idea of authorship and that we are allowed to have stories. Stories are ways we as beings can affirm ones self, overlap, connect and belong. Thinking about the group dynamic in this context lead me to consider echolocation. Echolocation is the location of objects by reflected sound, a guiding tool. I thought about how humans use sound and story to locate one another, locate/reflect community and a sense of belonging. This then made me think about the inherent trust there is in moving through the world this way, trusting in the reflected sounds, stories, narrative. I considered how moving through the world this way might be more challenging/complicated for someone whos ability to trust themselves and others has been impacted, broken. How can someone trust others if they cannot trust themselves? It’s an understatement to say that we need trust in our self and in others to have a rich and shared quality of life. In addition we must be able navigate betrayal of trust and a re-building of it when it is broken, because it is human to make mistakes. There is no sustainability in trust that is precarious. When you have learned that the door is either all the way open or all the way closed, doing the opposite and trying to find the inbetween can be severely triggering. I don’t ever blame anyone for avoiding doing so. 

In workshop, I witnessed layers peel back slowly as we moved through exercises, sat with feelings. Willingness building trust, I sensed it growing in the room and how it changed the energy. The source of this story is about this experience as a whole but also a particular nonlinear moment in this space. By this point a shared discomfort felt like it had bubbled to the top and now hung heavy in the air and in our bodies. This shift changed the environment, whatever sounds from the outside world had been reverberating into the room had stopped and the sun light felt as though it had been yanked out, convinced that I could see a faint imprint of where it had been just moments prior. I sat there in our circle, feeling uncomfortably torn between fear, the desire to share and be seen, and the anxiety of missing the opportunity (an emotional landscape someone else in the circle had so perfectly previously described). Sitting in this feeling I felt increasingly untethered, foggy. Someone in the group arrived to their moment, and then to my surprise delivered me to mine. In hindsight, within this workshop all of my previous moments lead/delivered me to this present moment, where a stranger looked to me with curiosity in how to continue through this shift we felt congealed in. I felt surprised, then affirmed, seen. My voice shook as I spoke and I felt a shadowed urgency to get everything out..in time for I don't know what. My body felt fear and panic but my mind was with me in this present moment, I was both speaking from and challenging the kid-amanda place. I felt a swelling embarrassment sneaking in for how much I was visibly and audibly struggling. However, being in a space with others who were willingly stepping into fear created a palpable vulnerability and courage. Words fell out of my mouth, trying to stretch over the cracks so as not to fall in, I spoke about echolocation in this context and about our amazing capacity to create and cultivate trust out of thin air. How it felt to witness trust moving through the room with us and how fast it could move shifting us from place to place - and how having faith in That: the speed of trust: Movement, could allow/deliver us out of this feeling we felt convincingly stuck in. My nervous system was on high alert so it’s hard to remember exactly what happened after that, but I believe we did collectively move through that feeling and for me, come to a place of closure, reflection and release. I thought, as though I was watching my younger self from the sidelines: I! am! Practicing! Trust! and Fear! and it’s! OK!

My faith in Movement comes from my lived experience and experience in therapy the last seven years. Feeling like living proof that someone like me - a child who knew so much about feeling hurt and scared became a hurt and scared adult - can find healing and safety. Movement and integration feel hand in hand, integration allows for movement and movement allows for integration. I’ve come to believe healing is all about movement, even when it is about stillness. It all feels so matter of fact now, but for a long time I had no idea I could be anything other than what I was - I was sadly manipulated into believing this for a long time but it should not be understated that trauma hinders ones ability to imagine. Desperation levels reality, I found myself willing to risk it all (what felt like risking my own safety, health, family - what years of being blamed for my own harm will do) out of fear of what would happen to my self if I didn’t. The years that followed felt like so many things that words feel inadequate, it felt like imploding my life and family, like being trapped under/pushing around a simultaneously sharp and dense boulder, like constant re-traumatization. It felt this way over and over and over until eventually It didn’t, it feels this way far less now, and for years I wondered when it would. Throughout those years navigating this, I struggled in the career path I had chosen and as a result often felt dispensable and like a failure. In hindsight I now know that freelancing is a relentless career and has a history of problematic behaviors towards the people who help make it all possible. It leaves me with admiration for those who work within it and advocate for themselves and their teams in spite of. Eventually I found metrics of success that felt more aligned with my developed values. And eventually I found my center more and more and the boulder slowly lifted off and in its place there i was, a me who had been waiting for years to emerge. The beautiful thing is that my faith in Movement is really just faith in me.

i'm not entirely sure and i feel with certainty that the meaning evolves, shape-shifts. last november by a joyous turn of events i wound up at a laurie anderson performance. that performance was the beginning of a new line of inquiry for me, revolving around the ears and the sonic experience. it gave way to new questions, fertilized my life with curiosity, reading, writing, experiencing surrounding these new wonderings. it all leads me where i need to go. this last weekend a friend text me saturday morning about going to a dance class and an hour and a half later there i was in the dance studio, as it turns out in a class themed around the ear/listening as a practice. i smiled big feeling the invisible line being drawn from this class and moment to all of the reading and writing i've been doing the last few months. it all leads me where i need to go. working with children puts me in proximity of their sensibilities, i observe the ways they self regulate or try to. the past few months i found myself subconsciously humming, mostly while biking. i notice how regulatory it is, in a way it feels like walking but with my voice. i sense another invisible line being drawn from my hum observation and practice to the readings and writings i've been submerged in since november. a hum moves through me and i move through it, a trusting symbiosis. it all leads me where i need to go. over the last six months to a year i've been feeling as though my foundation(s) have sprouted a million little strong and light tendril limbs and they are collectively moving me,us. i’m met with this intrinsic wordless knowing that the last few years have been leading up to this. a traumatized landscape once weighed down by boulders, bloated and wilting is now bare and porous and most notably, unafraid. so, in some way maybe this is what i currently mean when i say "life is humming these days", its feeling increasingly like a trusting symbiosis. life! feels! integrated! i need no convincing to lean in(or need no agonizing pursuing) for it all leads me where i need to go.

it’s night time and i’m walking alone down the side walk looking at the ground. a faint green reflection forces my chin to tilt up and my gaze rises to meet the sign, as if it’s been blinking quietly trying to get my attention so that it could ask me this very important question. 

i spent more years harboring deep splintering pain than not, and now, i think in a lot of ways i am on the other side of that. i am hesitant to say that at all for fear that I will be proven wrong but i am learning to trust and believe my self. to be clear, this does not mean that i won’t ever feel pain again but just that pain in the present moment will not violently trigger the pain(and subsequently other emotions) from my past. it wasn’t until a few years ago when a therapist reflected back at me “there’s a lot of pain in your life” that (after my initial confusion) i realized she, was right. i had lost the ability to differentiate pain from anything else. it was just, something that had been with me for so long. society is effective in normalizing and downplaying inner pain. i had subconsciously resigned myself to the consistent hum of hurt deep in my self. there were frequent and varying nightmares that my pain was rotting me from the inside out. pain is a thief. even from the initial point of realization, it’s taken years to get to where i am in this moment. some things take t-i-m-e, and maybe faith. we know that the experiences and emotions lodged inside your body cannot be ignored. we’ve seen and felt what that looks like. the emotions inside your body only ask to be held, given attention to, both actions that i believe ultimately aid in moving these feelings through your body(processing). it’s easy to underestimate the currents that flow within. it’s important to note that having the time, means, resources to do this kind of inner work is in this society a privilege. healing is a threat to capitalism. the goal is to continuously create accessibility to healing, in all the ways we can imagine. in my own experience i have used visuals as a way to facilitate inner movement, imagining my pain as a dark sludge moving through my body, dislodging itself from me the way things get torn off and carried with the current in a rushing river. imagining laying down and my pain being released as hot steam through a carefully regulated faucet on the bottoms of my feet. imagining my pain as a separate entity from me(a large marble ball in the center of the room), enforcing that it does not define me, it is not me. imagining it as a black and green slime, its hues dark and rich, inconsistently bubbling and oozing out from a crack in a large rock (in this imagining i uncovered that when you looked at this slime, the heat and steam and transferred intensity from it made my eyes sting, made it hard to look at). many of these visuals are things that come to me in meditation on what pain could look and feel like. the next time you are in the throes of an emotion, if possible, ask yourself what could this look like? and sit with that question, let it lead you and do not judge the visuals that appear. write to me with your findings if you wish.