This year’s winner of the Jane Crater Hiatt Fellowship, awarded each year to an individual artist to support the development of new work over a two-year period, Jerrod Partridge is a full-time studio artist, educator, and curator based on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He has exhibited work in Japan, Italy, and across the United States. Alongside his wife, Jessie, Partridge owns Palmette, a flower shop and art gallery in downtown Ocean Springs, Mississippi. He leads trips and creative retreats to Europe each summer and organizes Art Space 86 projects, which provide opportunities for artists and enrich communities through art. Partridge’s work can be seen at Palmette, by appointment at his studio in Ocean Springs, and at Fischer Galleries in Jackson, Mississippi; Southside Gallery in Oxford, Mississippi; and Claire Elizabeth Gallery in New Orleans. He earned an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2004, studied graphic design at Mississippi College, and spent a semester in London studying art history. He received a Visual Arts Fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission and was named Distinguished Alumnus of the Year by the Mississippi College Department of Art in 2017.
Contributing writers were encouraged to pen texts using the style, voice, and format of their choice. The resulting suite of poetry, journalistic and critical prose, creative essays, and personal reflections offers diverse perspectives on the artists, their practices, and their lives.
A Note from the Curator
Hattiesburg native and Jackson resident Rick Cleveland is a decorated sports journalist and close friend of painter and papermaker Jerrod Partridge. Here he details their early relationship as neighbors in Jackson, bringing in voices from their community to help emphasize the impact that Partridge has had on the Mississippi art scene. Cleveland has been a witness to the growth of Partridge’s family, as well as his unshaken commitment to his painting career. The following text celebrates Partridge’s achievements, beautifully detailing the ways his work asks us to spend a little more time with the mundane.
Rick Cleveland on Jerrod Partridge
The theme for the 2025 Mississippi Invitational, “Call Home,” is perfect for this writer’s purposes. My home is next door to featured artist Jerrod Partridge’s former home in Jackson, Mississippi’s Fondren neighborhood.
Twenty years ago, this August, the Partridges—Jerrod and wife Jessie—welcomed my family to Fondren. This was the day before Hurricane Katrina ransacked Mississippi. We had a blue tarp roof on our new home for months and no electricity for nearly three weeks. In the wake of the storm’s devastation, it only took us hours to realize that we had hit the mother lode when it comes to neighbors. The Partridges showered us with kindness and compassion during a difficult time for all. They made us feel at home.
That friendship has continued for two decades, including the last nine years since the Partridges, regretfully for us, moved south to the lovely village of Ocean Springs.
In 2009, mid-recession, Jerrod left a full-time job with benefits to be a full-time artist and art instructor. No guaranteed paycheck, no benefits. Keep in mind that by this time Jerrod and Jessie had a toddler and a newborn baby. As always, it was a team decision, and in many ways a huge gamble. But Jessie knew her husband and his passion for his art. She also knew his talent. They bet on themselves. “We said: ‘Let’s just do it. If worse comes to worse, we’ll just eat beans.’”
“It took so much courage for a young couple with two babies to do what they did,” says Jackson artist Cleta Ellington. “I am in awe of that bravery almost as much as I am in awe of Jerrod’s talent.”
When asked what makes Partridge’s work so special, Ellington put it this way: “He sees things 99.9 percent of us miss. He sees the beauty, the uniqueness, in everything, from a sink of dishes to a pile of laundry in a chair.”
Marcy Fischer Nessel, owner of Fischer Galleries in Ridgeland and a long-time champion of Jerrod’s work, said, “I just think the true artist in him knew where he wanted to be, what he wanted to do. He just went for it. We all are the beneficiaries. His technique and his painting style are so beautifully composed. He is a treasure.”
Malcolm White, former director of the Mississippi Arts Commission, is another Partridge admirer. “Jerrod is just so creative. Some of my favorite works of his are on paper he makes himself. Paper making is an art form in itself. He paints on a canvas he creates. Who thinks of that? It just adds another dimension.”
During the eleven years we were the Partridges’ neighbors, so much happened. Jessie gave birth to a total of three remarkable children. Jessie retired as a nurse to become a full-time mother and floral designer. Together, Jerrod and Jessie now own and operate Palmette, a flower shop and art gallery in downtown Ocean Springs. They are a team in so many ways. I find it so cool that some of Jerrod’s finest paintings are of Jessie’s floral arrangements.
Indeed, there are so many dimensions to Jerrod Partridge, a gentle and compassionate husband, father, artist, and friend. Primarily, he goes about the art of living with an eye for beauty and light, and with the talent to interpret and share it all. We are the lucky ones.
