Jean Davis
Artist and Co-Founder of Resurrect Studio
For Jean Davis, making art is essential to her being. A whimsical drawn line or a slap of paint in the center of a canvas, and the world instantly begins expanding. She believes that how one makes art is how they live in the world. Jean is an Artist and Art Therapist and combines both sensibilities equally.
Jean’s passion for art began as a young child when long summer days bled into each other, allowing her unending time to meander, play and make things. During adolescence, when life circumstances became challenging and then devastating, making art provided an escape and at the same time, a way forward. For college, she studied at the School of Visual Arts in NYC and after was employed in a commercial art setting. That experience having quickly proved unsatisfying, she discovered the discipline of art therapy and gained clarity about the powerful practice of healing through art. She enrolled and thrived in the Creative Arts Therapy Graduate Program at Pratt Institute, and has since served as an art therapist and administrative leader in numerous social service settings as well as a professor in the Pratt program in which she was trained. She has also continuously maintained a private therapy practice in Brooklyn.
When Jean was director of a homeless shelter for women coping with mental illness, she was fortunate to meet and soon after marry Danny Rosenthal, who was employed at the same social service agency. More than 20 years later, they manage a full life of work, play and parenting three daughters: Leah, Naomi and Simone.
Recently, Jean’s passion for personal art-making has been ignited. Over the last few years, her collaboration with artist Nancy Wu and their mutual language of expression has led to a heightened consciousness about the immeasurable value of the artistic process. The friendship with Nancy and later, the birth of Resurrect Studio in early 2021, allowed a new chapter to be born and its ever-evolving philosophy has offered a new construct for thinking about the art of creation in a far more expansive way.
Nancy Wu
Artist and Co-Founder of Resurrect Studio
Nancy insists her first move is still her best. She chose her parents well, growing up in a mixed-race family of 6 kids with 51 first and 83 second cousins, and 13 sets of aunts and uncles. Every major religion is now represented within her family through marriage, boasting a breadth of professions so expansive that there is a midwife and a mortician; someone to escort you in, and someone to escort you out.
Her love languages include the challenge of cooking for whoever comes to dinner, wrapping presents, sharing in the cool blues and calming greens of nature, riding bike no-place-special for no-good-reason, chocolate and coffee, feel-good music, hot-n-sour soup and big hugs. An English major with a Masters in Architecture, Nancy worked in NYC as an architectural designer. She is most fond of working in the trenches of the creative process getting things built with talented and spirited teams of tradespeople who in spite of daily set-backs and gritty challenges, manifest inventive solutions thus finding a way to enjoy the ride.
She married architect Bob Henry. They have three children, Zane, Bo and Chloe. Nancy started making art recently to overcome the trauma surrounding the death of Chloe who at 13½ passed from altitude sickness while on a family trip to China in Aug 2016. In a flash, everything changed. Witnessing Chloe’s soul being released like a bird of passage in the direction of Home, what mother or father would not find a way to climb over the Himalayas if they knew their child was on the other side? Shaking a fist at God only begat more and more grief.
Few are as skilled in the art of Life as Jean Davis, who has the capability of joining people in not only their most difficult of places, but manages to do so with a heart of Love. Linked together by their daughters who remain besties, Nancy and Jean befriended a week before the China trip and have been in spiritual lockstep ever since. Resurrect Studio has heaven to thank.