Interview with Jermaine “jET” Carter, 2025 Summer at the Stew Resident
Jermaine “jET” Carter is the 2025 Summer at the Stew Resident. Julia Kagan, my project manager, spoke with Jermaine about the major ideas guiding his work and what he has been creating at The Stew this summer. Join us on Saturday, September 6th to view and learn more about the work that Jermaine has created this summer, as well as his practice at large.
Julia: What is the jETCO universe, and what are some of the overarching ideas and themes that guide you as you create it?
Jermaine: The jETCO universe connects many of my works inspired by Southeast DC, where I grew up. I first began creating the universe when I was in high school as a means of survival and protection. It was something that would make me feel safe in an environment that wasn’t always conducive to safety. Art was my outlet in the form of escapism, so a lot of pieces connected to the jETCO universe are otherworldly, depicting people having magical, surreal experiences in a neighborhood like mine. Works that are a part of the universe depict real-life experiences that were hard for me to understand, but I would rewrite them and transmute them to cartoons and narrative ties that were more digestible to me.
The creation of jETCO also a great way for me to document history - small histories of neighborhoods that would otherwise be taken away. My neighborhood wasn’t super well resourced and I was often looking over my shoulder growing up. Creating the jETCO universe also allowed me to have a sense of stability that I didn’t always have in my daily life.
There are other universes depicted in my work too - ones that center on specific characters or ideas.
Julia: Can you share about your solo exhibition, SUPER-CHARGED - the ideas behind the show, and the ways that it combined the different mediums you use as a multidisciplinary artist?
The exhibit was called SUPER-CHARGED because of the intensity of everything that was happening in my life at the time - moving, getting the whole show ready in a short amount of time. Also that all the work that I made in the show was created through found materials. I would take things like pokemon cards, different bills, receipts, small notes, sketchbooks, and then blend them into a paper pulp that created a really interesting paper surface to create my works on, one that was “supercharged” with the energy from the world around me.
On the paper that I made for the SUPER-CHARGED show, I then took my digital practice of rendering and digitally drawing things and then transmuting that into physical works. That was a really important process for me as a multidisciplinary artist - to connect the digital work with something so tangible that was created from materials around me.
The subject matter in the show is centered on a character named JAMAL, this Black police officer character. He is the only Black police officer in this universe - he’s a superhuman; the average superhero - strength, speed, all that good stuff. And then he signed up for the police force, where he really did good. And this universe parallels the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. So JAMAL is basically like - “I love justice, I love the police”. So he takes on the whole city and makes himself into a figure that everyone can lean on. Someone who was basically like, I don’t want to see anyone hurt at all. He then comes across a device at the police station that can be used to turn other people into replicas of himself, and he begins to lose his humanity as the whole world around him turns into other JAMALs.
JAMAL JEMISON, 2023, Inkjet Transfer burnished onto handmade jETCO Paper, enhanced with color pencil. Paper Contents: Baseball cards, bills, and receipts
I was thinking a lot about critical race theory while creating the works. Really, JAMAL is reworking and reshaping history. In many of my works, I depict him as certain historical figures, like the first men on the moon.
Julia: Are there other ways that the various mediums you work in interact with one another?
Jermaine: I am really interested in mold making to create replications of my work. I have created plaster castings of an action figure that I created of Jamal. It definitely parallels a physical method of copying and pasting that you would do in a program like photoshop.
The copying and reproduction of my work calls back to my earliest memories as an artist. In third grade, I used to have Xerox copies of my drawings that I carried around in a binder and sold for a dollar each.
Julia: I definitely want to keep most of what you have been working on this summer a surprise for those attending the showcase in September, but can you give us a general sense of the ideas that have been guiding your practice at The Stew this summer?
Jermaine: The time at The Stew this summer has been really eye opening for my practice. I haven’t had a dedicated studio space in about five years - so being able to create on my own time, if that means going to the studio super late - I really cherish that.
This time has been a new step in a great direction for me. While I am duplicating and casting plaster molds, how can I think more about them as new surfaces to create on? I am creating casts from molds that I then draw and paint on, creating a tessellation that tells a different story on each part. That process makes me think - what does it mean to have your own canvas? This is your universe, this is the one you have to make for yourself. I am exploring how knowing that can impact your life and your decisions, both in and off the physical canvas. ✦
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Jermaine “jET” Carter (b. 1998, Washington, DC) is an interdisciplinary artist from Southeast Washington, DC, whose diverse body of work encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture (physical and digital), motion graphics, animation, casting, papermaking, fabrication, rendering, and world-building within his jETCO universe. He earned his BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, NY (2020). Carter’s art has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including Washington, DC; New York, and Chicago, as well as in his first solo exhibition SUPER-CHARGED, London, England (2023). He is currently a fellow with Hamiltonian Artists and will have his next solo exhibition in March 2026, which will explore narratives expressed through tessellations.
