From Star Trek to the Kabbalah, since the early ‘90s Jesse Bransford has been gleaning archaic, peripheral, and esoteric cultures for their icons, symbols, signs, and remnants of their deep. Generally images and info are ganged into his personal mythology and conflated and floated without regard to a chronology within a star map. His initial rather graphic visual interests later gave way to a more philosophical research and most recently to a bit more expressiveness. One search unfolds another. All things seem connected. We are floating in space.

Jesse Bransford’s “The Jungle (for Norma)” investigates the legendary psychotropic plant ayahuasca and his experience with that plant as guided by Norma, an Amazonian curandero (healer, shaman). He examines the indigenous culture, the plant(s) and their properties both scientifically and visually. As well, his personal experiences and visions from the trip, along with their following repercussions, are chronicled in this body of work.