Jessica Helfand (b. 1960) is an artist and writer.
She grew up in Paris and New York City, and received her BA and MFA from Yale University where she taught for more than two decades. She is the author of numerous books on visual and cultural criticism, and was the first-ever recipient, in 2010, of the Henry Wolf Residency at the American Academy in Rome.
A 2018 Director’s Guest at Civitella Ranieri and a 2019 fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation, Jessica Helfand was also the 2020 Artist in Residence at Caltech. She lives and works in New England.
The cold wind had swelled and reddened my hands, uncurled and entangled my hair, and dyed my face of a pale purple; add to this my collar was horridly crumpled, my frock splashed with mud, my feet clad in stout new boots, and as the trunks were not brought up, there was no remedy … so having smoothed my hair as well as I could, and repeatedly twitched my obdurate collar, I proceeded to clomp down two flights of stairs, philosophizing as I went.
