About

Jessica Brown is a Afrofuturist, interdisciplinary, multimedia spectacle generator, creative connector, community advocate, cosmonaut explorer, and mermaid creating disruptive & discursive work. Her work is rooted in liberation theology, dipped in pop culture references, sprinkled with humor, and packaged in Joy.

Known around town as Lady J, she is a visual and performance artist, designer, entertainer, musician, producer, party thrower and world builder — curated and unscripted.  An Associate Professor of Industrial Design at Rhode Island of Design, she teaches courses in toy design for social impact and community engagement. She serves on the University’s Board of Social Equity & Inclusion (SEI), Community Engagement, and Black Alumni steering committee. And is the advisor for the Toy Club.

As a Design Activist, she creates tools & applications to advance crucial changes, build healing spaces to support & empower, & works to create just societies. Her curated spaces bring people together using a liberatory design framework and doses of nostalgia. She works from a place of joy and justice in order to empower, uplift and encourage and believes that art should agitate, engage, and inform.

Within the Providence community she is very active, formally serving in the African American Ambassadors Group (AAAG) under Mayor Elorza to advance the progress of her people on the path to Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations, was a board member of the Providence Municipal Reparations Commission advocating to close the racial wealth gap.

She runs her own design and Productions Studio, Lady J Productions where she is often called on to host or emcee events, is a founding board member and working artist at Studio 50 Sims, longtime board member of PRONK! (Providence Honk Festival of bands and community activists), member of the Haus of Glitter Performance Lab, member of the Social Justice intergalactic funk band Astromama, founder of OPP! (Optimistic People Project!) and FLOAT! Water based survival practices for Black Women and Women of Color.  

Long story short, she likes to talk about serious things in a disarmingly silly way. And if you can't get a hold of her, she's probably at the ocean, restoring her soul.