Jess Lamar Reece Holler
1 Course • 2 StudentsBiography
Jess Lamar Reece Holler (b. 1988: Westerville, Ohio) is a community-based cultural organizer, public folklorist, & documentarian based between Columbus and Marion County, Ohio. Jess is active as a public-sector folklorist, oral historian, media- maker, historic preservationist, and community organizer: she runs Caledonia Northern Folk Studios, a capacity-building & social justice consultancy for cultural non- profits in North-Central Ohio, and founded and directs the Marion Voices Folklife & Oral History Program in Marion County, among many other community cultural arts projects around Ohio & the country. She is known across the cultural work, public-sector folk arts & oral history communities for her pioneering model of “equity budgeting” in community-collaborative arts work — a “dual systems” approach to paying both community members and cultural workers —as well as building more equitable, less-extractive praxis for community collaboration thru labor organizing for cultural workers & consultancy to help historically white-led organizations divest from whiteness & show up for racial, economic, social, & environmental justice. Jess is an active labor organizer in the cultural work sphere, & currently, with Sarah Dziedzic, Co-Chairs the Oral History Association’s Independent Practitioner’s Task Force, which is producing a suite of materials to help advocate for livable & sustainable wages & ethics of engagement for freelance oral historians & allied cultural workers.
Jess is also a documentary artist, experimental filmmaker, photographer, & sound recordist whose work bridges both community-collaborative documentary arts praxes for social justice — rooted in emergent design & deep community relationship — and personal experimental documentary arts practices. She works in digital photography, 16mm filmmaking, cassette tape, & digital sound recording; with a special focus on ambient and environmental media— including expanded cinema, experimental documentary and environmental soundscape recording. Her past work has taken up themes of toxicity & environmental justice across Ohio — including in the fracklands of Eastern Ohio, and at the River Valley Schools site in Caledonia. Jess’s documentary arts practice has been supported by the Puffin West Foundation, & Greater Columbus Arts Council; and she served as a Summer 2019 Artist-in-Residence at EPICENTER in Green River, Utah, where she produced the GREEN RIVER AMBIENTsoundscape library. She is also a long-time DJ at WCRS-LP FM — Columbus’s community radio station — where she produces a weekly ambient, environmental, incidental, & “background sounds” show, NIGHTPLANT RADIO.
