My work is an ongoing dialogue between the past and the present, the personal and the political, the mundane and the significant. The magazine Better Homes and Gardens was ever present in the household where I grew up as a guidebook for the good life. I now live in a post-industrial neighborhood where I survey gentrification and ruderal nature from my rooftop garden. Questions that pervaded my childhood continue to preoccupy me as they resurface in public debate – degradation of the natural world, social disfunction, nuclear threat – all with myths and fears not easily shaken. My visual vocabulary is informed by observable phenomenon such as shadows, chance, tactility, gravity, and entropy which I use to collide tangible objects with illusion in sculpture, installations, drawings, and public art. My work meshes history with the present in ways that posit environmental issues close and personal. Because I believe the commonplace reveals larger truths, I transform overlooked detritus with research to create new forms by juxtaposition. Recycling and composting are not strategies, but the way I seek to live and make art responsibly. By engaging with the remnants of our daily life, I reveal experiences that shape our collective journey.​

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Jill Sebastian grew up in the steel towns of the Midwest rust belt along the Great Lakes. She became aware of arts broad impact when she witnessed a lone woman paint a mural to celebrate the conclusion of a long, bitter labor strike. During the summers, Jill freely roamed her aunt and uncle’s diverse subsistence farm adding to the diversity of landscapes that formed her engagement with nature. Over varied distinct bodies of work, sculpture, installations, public art, she maintains deeply held values and goals about art’s potential in environmental and social, civic discourse. Sebastian’s gallery representation has included – Bertha Urdang Gallery in New York City; Cantor-Lemburg Gallery in Detroit; Factory Place in Los Angeles; Kit Basquin, Dean Jensen, Michael Lord, and currently VAR Gallery in Milwaukee. She has had numerous solo and over 100 group exhibitions plus eight multi-disciplinary collaborations. Her dedication to community involvement inspired her integrated public works – notably, a musical instrument fence in the French Quarter of New Orleans, an architecturally integrated literary project for the Milwaukee Baird Convention Center, a streetscape for the City of Madison, and a site-specific sculptural park based on the swing of a baseball bat for Wick Fields, Milwaukee. Among her awards are a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship 1985, City of Milwaukee Artist of the Year 1997, Milwaukee "Woman of Influence" in 2010, and the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. She taught sculpture and public art for 34 years, first at University of Denver, and then Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design.