Jessica King

A BIG Thank You to the Kercher Family for sponsoring this storm drain art!

Artist Bio

Born and raised in Castalia, Ohio (near Cedar Point), Jessica’s love for art began at young age. Doodles in the Sunday bulletins turned into three Governor Show pieces in high school, to having ceramic pieces in the Springfield Art Museum during college. A Religion major with a Art minor from Wittenberg University, Jessica had great aspirations of going onto graduate school in ceramics with the hopes of one day teaching art. However, God had other plans for Jessica’s life. With a divinity degree in hand from Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Jessica now finds ways to express her creativity through her ministry as one of the pastors at Faith Lutheran Church in Goshen; she especially enjoys capturing the imperfectly perfect moments of life through photography, painting, and doodling while prepping for her sermons.

Artist’s Reflection

I chose to take a whimsical approach to the theme “A Great Place to Explore.” I decided to put together two unlikely creatures, a hippopotamus and a frog, that need water to survive and have them explore our storm drains and the city of Goshen. I chose these two animals to represent the diversity of animals that are affected by what we put in our storm drains. As they float along the storm drains in an umbrella the frog keeps an eye out for all of the unique places to explore while the hippopotamus reads a book that he picked up from the Goshen Library.

Playing off of one of my favorite children’s book authors Dr Seuss, I wrote the slogan “protect our rivers here and there don’t pollute them anywhere,” as a reminder that not only do we need to protect our rivers starting at the rivers themselves but also at our storm drains. We need to be aware of what we place in our waterways can harm everything that lives in or around them.