Jess Bush is an Australian actress, model, and visual artist. She rose to fame at age 19 as a contestant in the talent show Australia’s Next Top Model which was followed by a successful career in modelling.
In 2017, she appeared in the long-running Australian soap opera Home and Away, followed by a part in the drama series The Secret Daughter, a recurring role in the soccer drama series Playing for Keeps and an episode of crime drama series Halifax: Retribution.
Most recently Jess landed her first starring role, as Nurse Christine Chapel in the critically acclaimed Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
A visual artist since childhood, Jess began selling her pieces professionally at age 19. She is also a jewellery designer, and some of her pieces appear on Strange New Worlds.
Since 2019, Jess has been developing and exhibiting her ongoing Bee Totem series, collecting dead honeybees from beekeepers, preserving them in spheres of crystal resin and attaching fine jewellery chains. Her exhibitions collaborate with projection artists and sound designers to hang the many preserved bees at different heights to create shapes and experiences in three-dimensional space.
Bee Totem is about recognizing and emphasizing the importance of the bees that, not only make the human world liveable, but then “live by the thousands and die quietly by the thousands.” The individual preserved bee in the sphere is amplified and magnified, showing its intelligence and beauty; it causes the observer to “pause and think about the moment that it died, because it’s frozen in that moment after its death, so it’s kind of like a memorial.” The installation then amplifies “that impact of thousands dead at the same time”. Jess has described Bee Totem as “the most significant work that [she’s] ever made” with a goal of doing so “probably forever”. She would like to build a cathedral for thousands of preserved bees, to allow people to quietly sit and reflect in the immensity of sacrifice.
Jess’ art can be found at http://onejessa.com