The Visiting Artists Program resource guides contain upcoming speakers' biographies, articles, video and audio content, related publications in the Flaxman Library, and additional online resources. These guides may be used in the classroom in preparation for the event, research, or post-lecture discussion.
JJJJJerome Ellis: Tuesday, March 24, 6:00–7:30 p.m. CT
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation services.
Join us for a lecture by artist JJJJJerome Ellis followed by an audience Q&A.
JJJJJerome Ellis (any pronoun) is a disabled Grenadian Jamaican American artist, surfer, and person who stutters. Through music, performance, writing, video, and photography, Ellis asks what stuttering can teach us about listening, generosity, and justice. JJJJJerome has the great privilege of being married to poet-ecologist Luísa Black Ellis. They live in a monastery on a creek in traditional Nansemond and Chesepioc territory, a.k.a. Norfolk, Virginia. JJJJJerome dreams of building a sonic bath house! Concepts that organize the artist’s practice include: unknowing, improvisation, fugitivity, illegibility, inheritance, opacity, prayer, gap, contradiction, aporia, eternity, unpredictability, interruption, silence, and devotion. The artist’s body of work includes contemplative soundscapes using saxophone, flute, dulcimer, electronics, and vocals; scores for plays and podcasts; albums combining spoken word with ambient and jazz textures; theatrical explorations involving live music and storytelling; and music-video-poems that seek to transfigure archival documents.
Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Wellness Center
Image Credit: JJJJJerome Ellis. Photo by Annie Forrest
JJJJJerome Ellis: Vesper Sparrow review – shape-shifting composer taps the musical potential of their stutter
Katie Hawthorne | The Guardian | November 14, 2025
JJJJJerome Ellis: Forming a Vocal Clearing
Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi | Mousse Magazine | March 22, 2025
How JJJJJerome Ellis Turns Their Stutter into the Music of Liberation
Wren Sanders | Them | September 27, 2024
JJJJJerome Ellis crafts silence and sound in Aster of Ceremonies
Derrick Philips | Smile Politely | April 16, 2024
Liturgy of the Name
JJJJJerome Ellis | BOMB Magazine | October 10, 2023
On embracing blocks as opportunities
Sammy Maine | The Creative Independent | February 13, 2023
Angel Bat Dawid and JJJJJerome Ellis
BOMB Magazine | January 10, 2023
On Enunciation and Escape
Nicole Kaack | Art in America | June 20, 2022
JJJJJerome Ellis’s The Clearing
Erica N. Cardwell | The Brooklyn Rail | March 2022
JJJJJerome Ellis—A Gift Carried with Integrity
Christine Kakaire | Various Artists | November 15, 2022
Artist and stutterer JJJJJerome Ellis: ‘So much pain comes from not feeling fully human
Kadish Morris | The Guardian | November 10, 2021
JJJJJerome Ellis Reframes Disability as a Means for Creation in “The Clearing”
Christian Kriegeskotte | I Care If You Listen | November 3, 2021
Cherishing Stuttering with JJJJJerome Ellis [Podcast Episode]
StutterTalk | Episode 723 | September 24, 2023 | Please note this podcast does not provide transcripts
As for Protocols
by
Explicitly--or not--protocols determine much of what we do. Far exceeding traditional notions of "good manners," protocols are systems of language that regulate how we relate to each other, to our cultural, social, and political environments, and to the technologies that create them. The first publication to look at protocols across a wide range of disciplines, As for Protocols brings together contributions by twenty-two international artists, writers, scholars, musicians, architects, and scientists who explore protocols across various fields, foregrounding opportunities for creating new protocols that are inclusive and equitable. Through essays, artworks, interviews, and scores, the book speaks to protocols as practice--neither conventional mannerisms nor abstract concepts, but material processes, relational affinities, shared responsibilities, and mutual care. Edited by Re'al Christian, Carin Kuoni, and Eriola Pira, an opening score by Raven Chacon and contributions by Salome Asega, Carolina Caycedo with Lupita Limón Corrales, Raven Chacon, Jesse Chun, Asia Dorsey, Taraneh Fazeli and Cannach MacBride, Pablo Helguera, Emmanuel Iduma, Mary Maggic, Shannon Mattern, V. Mitch McEwen with Nadir Jeevanjee, Rashaun Mitchell with Silas Riener, Romy Opperman, Rasheedah Phillips, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson with Maria Hupfield, Ultra-red with Robert Sember, and Underground Resistance.
Aster of Ceremonies
by
A polyphonic new entry in Multiverse--a literary series written and curated by the neurodivergent--JJJJJerome Ellis's Aster of Ceremonies beautifully extends the vision of his debut book and album, The Clearing, a "lyrical celebration of and inquiry into the intersections of blackness, music, and disabled speech" (Claudia Rankine). Aster of Ceremonies asks what rites we need now and how poetry, astir in the asters, can help them along. What is the relationship between fleeing and feeling? How can the voices of those who came before--and the stutters that leaven those voices--carry into our present moment, mingling with our own? When Ellis writes, "Bring me the stolen will / Bring me the stolen well," his voice is a conduit, his "me" is many. Through the grateful invocations of ancestors--Hannah, Mariah, Kit, Jan, and others--and their songs, he rewrites history, creating a world that blooms backward, reimagining what it means for Black and disabled people to have taken, and to continue to take, their freedom. By weaving a chorus of voices past and present, Ellis counters the attack of "all masters of all vessels" and replaces it with a family of flowers. He models how--as with his brilliant transduction of escaped slave advertisements--we might proclaim lost ownership over literature and history. "Bring me to the well," he chants, implores, channels. "Bring me to me." In this bringing, in this singing, he proclaims our collective belonging to shared worlds where we can gather and heal. The Aster of Ceremonies audiobook read and performed by JJJJJerome Ellis is available everywhere you listen to audiobooks.
The Clearing
by
Loops of Retreat: JJJJJerome Ellis
Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, May 25 – June 22, 2023
In Feeling: Empathy and Tension Through Disability
The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia
August 30, 2025 - January 4, 2026
Visiting Artists Program Lecture Recordings from the Archive
SAIC Visiting Artists Program video and audio lecture recordings (1977–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.
SAIC Digital Collections: Visiting Artists Program
SAIC Visiting Artists Program publicity archive and audio recordings (1977–98).