#bboa

Morrison Housing, Rosario, Argentina - BBOA

Jen Holt, 25, of Columbus, Georgia, poses for a portrait outside her home in Athens, Georgia. Jen works at local doughnut haven Ike & Jane and creates art in the form of photograms, utilizing a photo enlarger in the bathroom of her apartment to create images of natural objects without a camera.

Jen and I sipped beers at Hi-Lo a few weekends ago to talk about her art, how she defines female beauty and her relationship with Athens.

What do you call your work? I call them photograms...it’s camera-less photography and I don’t use any camera but I use the traditional black and white developing process. I started it actually in 2009. I took a photography class my last semester at Columbus State, being present there, and our professor was awesome. The first day we were going through the syllabus and he was like, “I just want you to mark out the last paragraph for the final. Just mark all of it out. We’re gonna talk about it when we get closer to it.” Time came down and he taught us about photograms and he taught us about everything that has to do with developing black and white film. 

Once he taught us about photograms, I was just so fascinated with the fact that you could explore different mediums. We burned film, we scratched film, we did all sorts of things but I would take flower petals and I would put them in the enlarger and I could see all the veins. It was kind of like an x-ray for plants. So I started exploring that medium and when it came time for the final, he was like, “I just want you to take something you learned in this class and I want you to explore that.”

What do you like and dislike about being a woman?  I really like feeling beautiful because feminine beauty [or] femininity has always been a very beautiful thing to me. I think embracing that beauty has been hard. It’s not necessarily that I’ve always been like, “Oh I’m beautiful so I feel great about it.” There is so much about me that is so unique and special because I am a woman. I experience things differently. I think about things differently. I see things differently. My perspective is totally different. But the wonderful part about that is realizing that everyone has that. It’s a solidarity more so than an isolation situation. 

It’s being able to define what beauty means to me rather than what’s projected onto me. Of course everyone struggles with self-esteem and what they see as beautiful or what so-and-so thinks is beautiful is not necessarily what so-and-so thinks is beautiful. But being able to define for myself what I find beautiful.

Fundamentally, I don’t like having a period. It’s not fun. It messes with me hormonally in all the ways. Obviously I think that’s a very universal woman complaint. I’m grateful for that because that’s part of what sets us apart, but also the sacrifice that our body makes every single month or every nine months, hypothetically...I don’t think men could handle it. I’m kinda grateful that we’re the ones who deal with it. We’re the ones that get to handle all the pain because we actually have the capacity for it. That’s also what I find so beautiful. The part that I don’t love is also part of what I love about it. I love that we were given, from some weird sense of nature deciding things, that we were strong enough to carry the burden of this every month until our bodies are done. It’s continuously destroying itself to rebuild itself. I love that. Every month you get room to grow (or a womb to grow).

What brought you to Athens? I came to Athens initially to help my brother pay rent but to get into UGA. I transferred from Columbus State University with a general arts degree and then when I came here I was like, “I’m gonna teach students. I’m gonna teach anything,” and then I started out as an education major and was like, no, I don’t want to do this. Even being in Aderhold [Hall] made me uncomfortable. My mom is a teacher and I knew the bureaucracy of teaching was not something that I fit into just because I’m so much like my mom. But I definitely moved here to go to school and I got an art history degree and I love it. I’m so stoked on my degree. I had some reservations about getting an art history degree because it is one of those degrees where you have to keep going with it to get any kind of career in it, essentially, or you could just carve your own path, which I was really into. That’s kind of how I was raised. My dad definitely guided me in a lot of really great ways but he was also very encouraging of me questioning everything and like making my own path and deciding things for myself, which has been a struggle but it’s really rewarding to be like, “I made this decision. I’m in this place because I made this decision and I’m really grateful for it.” I’ve just learned to be grateful for the things that I get presented with. 

What made you stay in Athens? I stayed in Athens because initially, when I graduated, I was like, this pond is too small. I’m a big fish. I gotta get out and make my splashes somewhere else. I realized that actually the struggle that I had was not with this town. It was with myself. I had a lot of hangups of “the opportunities just aren’t here. I feel like I’m not gonna get fed the way I need to be fed and I just need to grow.” I realized that a lot of my struggle wasn’t gonna change if I went to a different city. It wasn’t gonna change if I went anywhere else. I had to work on me first so I stuck around to feel the comfort of this place. It is really comforting to walk into a bar by myself and know that I’m gonna run into five of my friends. 

After I got past the wanting to leave part and I decided to stay, I started meeting people who were also wanting to stay and were very encouraging. They have opportunities that they can reach out to me and they know the talents that I hold and are like, “you would be useful in this situation.” I pretty much just started loving this town for what it was rather than what I wanted it to be. It worked out great because I’m really happy with the situation that I’m in. I have so many friends that are encouraging and really positive women that I surround myself with. I don’t think that I would’ve been able to find that. The older that you get, the harder that it is to find friends because people are in their cliques and they don’t really want to let you in because you could be intimidating or something could be a little bit off about you that they’re not cool with or you could just be a little too goofy and not take yourself seriously enough. 

It’s the beauty of choosing to accept yourself as the way that you are, as well as other people around you in the town that you’re in and being present in this place, [that] opens up so many opportunities.

Maybe I don’t got it next week, but I got it right now and it’s one day at a time.

This week I got to listen to my friend Jianna play music as Penny Lame at a packed-yet-intimate house show and at the famous 40 Watt Club. Both instances were equally magical. Click the link and give this girl a thumbs up! 

She’s young, talented and her music is honest. It makes me think, makes me mad at boys and basically gives me all the feels. I can’t wait to watch this girl go.

(polaroid by me)