BYU BFA Student’s Artwork Examines How Bodies Navigate Society And Space
When Jillian Elder-Pope walks into her studio, she does not prepare to simply sculpt or paint. She prepares to examine questions. “As a contemporary artist, I am drawn to expressing ideas and questions more than a particular medium,” she said. “Some ideas are better expressed through a more physical form and some of my ideas are flatter and more linear. I gravitate to the mediums that fit my ideas best.”
Elder-Pope is a Brigham Young University Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) candidate with an Art Education licensure and a minor in Art History. She is set to graduate this spring after student teaching and her final exhibition on November 20th of this year. Jillian has built her creative identity on exploring the body and how it interacts with the world around it. Her work is bold, confrontational and often surprising — qualities that she has fully embraced. “I think my art tends to have a shock factor and I relish in gasps and open mouths when I see people interacting with my pieces,” she said. “Whether people ‘like’ my art or not, I love to see people engaging with it.”
Her path to becoming an artist was shaped by family and early experiences in Los Angeles. She grew up with her parents and three older sisters in an environment where creativity was encouraged. “My grandpa was an art teacher and many of my relatives have been creatives and makers,” Elder-Pope said. “My parents always encouraged my sisters and I to be art appreciators, taking us to the Getty and other museums in L.A.”
At age 12, a Christmas gift of art lessons became a turning point. The classes provided her with technical skills and sparked a love for making art. Later, high school art classes allowed her to express her perspective. Though her teachers encouraged her to pursue art professionally, she initially resisted. “I did not want to do art as a profession because I did not want to come to resent it or lose interest in it,” she said. But after a few semesters of soul-searching at BYU, she allowed herself to follow her passion fully as an artist and an art educator.
While many observers frame her work through the lens of body positivity, Elder-Pope resists a singular label. “I am positive about my body and proudly display it within my work, and because I am a fat woman, people assume that my cause as an artist is body positivity,” she said. “When people look at my art, I want them to think about their own bodies and how we all interact with the world that has been designed around us.”
Her ethos, she said, is always evolving. She hopes her art pushes viewers to consider how society structures accessibility and acceptance around different kinds of bodies, whether through size, race, disability or other. “I hope people consider the system that built the way we navigate public and private places, conversations and interactions,” she said.
Her artistic range is wide, including painting, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, video and photography. Each medium serves as a tool for exploring questions about identity, perception and social norms. Her recent projects have taken her beyond BYU’s campus, including a study abroad in Scandinavia where she interviewed artists who use traditional handicrafts in contemporary work.
Looking ahead, Elder-Pope is preparing for her BFA final exhibition, teaching as a substitute and working in local galleries. After graduation, she hopes to teach art in Utah, helping students use creativity to explore their own ideas. “I want my students to better understand a new way to express their own ideas and opinions,” she said. “I also want to help them navigate a world full of images and be able to interpret what they see daily.”
Through all of it, her commitment to art remains deeply personal, supported by her loving husband. “Being in the art world fuels me,” Elder-Pope said. “My passion and energy come from art, that is what keeps me creating.”
