UAH 2026 printmaking, art history, English graduate Jess Braden earns degrees 24 years in the making

Jess Braden stands at the entrance to her senior exhibition, “It Feels Frivolous,” in the Union Grove Gallery on the campus of The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) on April 17, 2026. Braden will receive a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking and a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in art history and English from UAH during spring commencement ceremonies on May 4, 2026, at the Von Braun Center Propst Arena.

Ann Marie Martin | UAH

When Jess Braden was growing up, Vogue and Marie Claire were not her friends.

“When you’re a teenage girl, fashion magazines control your body image,” she said. “They tell you what’s in style, what’s not. It becomes all-consuming. This is what we’re supposed to be emulating. But I was a tall kid, and I never really fit that mold. Fashion magazines became these things that I was interested in, but they also made me feel really bad about myself. They took a lot of my power away.”

Now she’s reclaimed that power – and turned the tables. In her hands, high-gloss images of consumer culture and silent judgment become fodder for artwork that frees her creative spirit.

Braden highlights these works in her senior exhibition, “It Feels Frivolous,” currently on display in the Union Grove Gallery on the campus of The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System. The show closes with a reception on Wednesday, May 6, from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

On May 4, Braden will experience a more significant closure when she graduates from UAH with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking and a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in art history and English from the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. UAH will award her degrees during spring 2026 commencement ceremonies at the Von Braun Center.

Graduation – summa cum laude with multiple degrees! – is another expression of her power, but it didn’t come fast or easy.

“Getting a degree,” said Braden, a nontraditional student at age 41, “has been about 24 years in the making.”

Her road to UAH began in her native Northern California in 2002 when she enrolled at The University of California Davis at age 17. She’d finished high school in just three years, and the college environment overwhelmed her. She wanted to pursue art while her parents urged science. She found herself in the Women’s Studies Department and eventually textile and costume design. Then she burned out and dropped out.

In her mid-20s, she continued to take community college classes, mostly English and writing. Along with California, she spent some time in Nashville, where she met her now-husband. They had two children and settled in Lincoln County, Tennessee, near his family.

Braden was expressing her creativity through two businesses: one selling handmade boutique cloth diapers, another supplying hand-dyed, screen-printed, natural-fiber textiles to other makers. Then came COVID-19. The stress of her businesses, family responsibilities and the state of the world hit her, and she realized she needed a change.

“I had that moment as a mother that I think happens to a lot of people, where you wake up one day and you’re like, I don’t know who I am.”

What Braden did know: She needed to finish her degree.

“When I came to UAH, I looked into the printmaking major because I had experience and background in screen printing. I fell in love with it immediately.”

A “really fun” literary studies class in the English department, plus the many English credits she’d acquired over the years, led to a dual-degree route.

Then came art history: “Fall of my second year, I took my first 300-level art history course with Dr. Laura-Lake Smith. I started falling in love with that, too.”

It’s not a common path, Braden notes, but it suits her artistic needs. And it has led her to create a vibrant body of work that confronts print media’s impact on modern culture and challenges viewers to question print and digital distractions.

“With this work I wanted to investigate the intersection between consumption and resistance,” she writes in her artist statement for “It Feels Frivolous.”

“Conducting an autopsy of print media fed to me since girlhood, I’ve taken appropriated imagery from luxury fashion ads and pulled them apart – layer by layer – to see what’s underneath. Using a modular collage technique, I began to bring fragments of visual culture directly to the bed of a scanner, inverting narratives. Then turning the lens back on myself, I engaged in an emotional deconstruction process with my own personal photography – capturing quiet, daily moments of resistance. Each image was then digitized and their color channel separated, to be reprinted by hand using CMYK screen-printing techniques.”

Along with magazine images, the exhibition includes works based on photos of her family.

“This is my way, as an adult and as a mom, to take that power back and present something different for my kids and give them a different framework for growing up.”

Braden had the vision, and the UAH art department helped her bring it to life.

“Coming here was kind of like kismet. I didn’t really know a lot about printmaking as a whole, but I can say with the utmost confidence that I would not be where I am today as an artist if it wasn't for Art Professor Katie Baldwin being my mentor. She’s incredible. She taught me so much, not just about the craft of printmaking but also about the business of art.”

Baldwin inspired Braden to consider a classroom career, too.

“I’ve been her teaching assistant for three and a half years, so I’ve observed her as an educator. I discovered I really do enjoy teaching. I’m planning to go on and get an MFA degree. I’m taking a little break, but I’m looking into low-residency programs.”

After all her hard work and accomplishments, Braden was nearing the end of her UAH journey when a bump in the road put her goal at risk. The UAH Last-Mile Fund provided a much-appreciated boost.

“I ran out of funding, and I found myself short on tuition. Katie told me about the Last-Mile Fund, and I contacted Interim Assistant Dean Jenny Russell-Clifton. She helped me go through the process, and I received a scholarship from the college and also from the university that helped get me over that last hurdle.”