CLIMBING THE MOUNTAINS IN BETWEEN

Jess Guatney is an artist and photographer based in Seattle, Washington. She moved from Phoenix to Seattle in 2017 and found a home within the climbing community. Every weekend was spent in the Cascades with a camera developing her mountaineering skills.

Meanwhile, in her cubicle career as an overwhelmed program manager, Jess confided in her mentor that she wished she had pursued an art degree in college. The mentor encouraged Jess to quit and pursue her creative talent with full force, “when you get to my age, don’t wonder what you could have done with the rest of your life”.

This web portfolio is a snapshot into her progression since starting her creative career in 2019, with an overarching goal to illustrate the love of a life outside and the slow road of long-term growth. Jess seeks to draw parallels between the urban and alpine worlds she calls home through her art and lifestyle photography

Through success and more often failure, this portfolio reflects on the moments worth the uphill battle both in daily life and in the alpine, which Jess summed up as “climbing the mountains in between”