SCR 58.1 Fall 2025 Issue’s cover art, titled A New View, is by artist Jessica Downs and reflects the intricate connection between humans and nature. For Jessica, A New View was brought on by both the public and personal the effects of Hurricane Helene, specifically the damage to the tree line behind her home, which was once a cherished location.
Jessica says that that treasured spot “is now complicated with the lingering memory of unsettled feelings and fear,” due to the national disaster. As you see in our cover art A New View, there are themes of ambiguity, conflict and instability.
However, Jessica was able to use the loss and create what we would later use as our cover. “I rendered the tree line in an idealized manner, using softened light and romanticized color to attract the viewer’s gaze, making it a wanted destination,” she says.
A physical viewpoint from her own bedroom window, curtain-like shapes shift towards root and body-like qualities in the piece.
“In the wake of that experience, I am left with the many realities that nature can engender, both beauty and danger, peace and destruction, as well as the fleeting space that harbors simultaneous feelings of a connection with, and a removal from, nature.”
Jessica Downs received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Drawing from Utah Valley University in 2024 and is currently an MFA candidate at Clemson University, with an expected graduation date of May 2026. Her work has been exhibited nationally, with recent shows in the Clara M. Lovett Art Museum, the Gertrude Institute of Art and the Utah Valley University Museum of Art. Downs has been the recipient of multiple awards, including Utah Valley University’s Outstanding Student Award for the entire Art and Design Department, was selected as an inaugural participant of the V. Douglas Snow Arts Mentorship Program in Torrey, Utah and was the recipient of the Penland/Clemson University HEPP Scholarship.
