Artist Bio

JANESSA BOOKOUT ARTIST BIO

Janessa Bookout is currently living and working in Southern California as a professional artist and author. She is also an artist coach and small business owner.

This is her life story:

Janessa was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was always a straight-A student who also worked as a YMCA summer camp counselor and held several part time jobs while attending school. She graduated with honors from Booker T. Washington High School in 2000.

Janessa received a substantial scholarship to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art. She moved to Baltimore at age 18 to study traditional fine art and explored digital technology, industrial fabrication and liberal arts. She also worked in restaurants to support herself through college and graduated with honors, receiving a BFA in Sculpture in 2004.

Janessa returned to Tulsa after college and continued to create her own fine art while also working as a creative fabricator, fashion model and waitress. She also spent some time traveling the US before moving to Southern California in 2008.

Janessa lived by the beach and worked from her art studio in Venice, CA . She also worked as a bartender for many years before joining forces with Dave Moore and moving to Huntington Beach, CA.

The couple officially formed DMZ Surfboards LLC in 2011. Janessa managed the office as she also began exploring the materials and techniques used in surfboard fabrication, applying them to her work as a fine artist. She regularly showed and sold her art in solo and group exhibitions in Orange County and Los Angeles during those years.

Janessa then opened her own retail shop in Sunset Beach, CA in 2016 and then later transitioned into new professional roles as an art gallery manager and website developer in Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar, CA.

She retired from brick and mortar retail gallery management in 2019 and stepped into her current role as a project manager for a custom fabrication shop. She also does some web design, admin work and 3D digital illustration work as an independent contractor for several artists and other small businesses.

Janessa wrote her first book in late 2019 and then later revised and published this book in 2023. She continues to make her own art from a home studio in Huntington Beach, CA and offers online or in person options for drawing lessons, artist mentorship and creative business consultations.

Janessa also launched an online coffee & tea business called Fifty Skies and became a founding member of a 501(c)3 non-profit called Operation Stoke in 2020. Janessa closed later down the Fifty Skies website in September of 2024 to focus on her art coaching career and will be stepping down from her role as Executive Director of Operation Stoke as of January 2025.

So yeah… she always stays busy with work, but also makes time to play on the beaches and in the mountains of Southern California.

Janessa truly is an ARTWORKAHOLIC, hence the name of her first book... "Artworkaholic: Confessions and Life Lessons for Independent Artists Building Their Own Creative Career Path"

Janessa still has big dreams and more goals to achieve in the future, but she is already proud of the progress she made as she looks back on how far she has come.