I’m Brandon Jones, the creator of LOUCHE.art and all its affiliated projects. I’ve worn many hats. Too many to mention, but here’s a few: museum registrar, photographer, pianist, writer, researcher, wigmaster, Long John Silver’s assistant manager, and even the Board Liaison to the National Endowment for the Arts. If I had to pick just one? That relic of a term: Renaissance man with its equal parts master and misfit.
My (adopted) dad converted our laundry room into a makeshift darkroom nearly four decades ago, and that’s where it all began. He’d take my brother and me to photograph Claremore’s cityscape or drive across the state looking for the best grain silos. We’d return home, and he would disappear behind the curtain.
I thought I’d be a concert pianist. I still play. Don’t get me wrong, but it turns out, I became a multimedia artist, a photo-ethnographer, and an archivist. In simplest terms, I collect stories. Through images, through words, I document the people, places, and memories that usually don’t make the cut. I adore the vernacular. I love the everyday. I fight for the mundane.
I spent years cultivating my voice rooted in the raw and the real. My style draws inspiration from Mapplethorpe, Goldin, Lange. My writing is informed by the likes of Easton, Susann, and Thompson. But everything I create is filtered through my lived experience—the accolades and accomplishments, yes, but also the wreckage and the reckoning. I studied graphic design at Rogers State, earned two bachelor’s degrees in photography and art history, and completed a master’s with a dual specialty in international business and cultural heritage. And before all that, I went to beauty college. Though my disability challenges me daily, I developed a rare, scalable, and adaptable skill set that allows me to pivot at a moment’s notice and to counter its effects.
It’s what some might call a jack-of-all-trades, but in my case, I’m a master of most. I’m the child of carnies, so maybe it’s no surprise that I made a life out of spectacle and subversion. Now, I’m planning the next chapter: my PhD in Art History.
Every day, I march forward even as my disability tries to stop me. I survived several surgeries, including one for a brain tumor. Because of this, my health shapes every creation. Creation is how I move through pain, through life. It’s how I live, and it is how I plan to complete the final phase of my grand plan: writing my dissertation and receiving my doctorate in art history from the Universidad de Buenos Aires.
LOUCHE.art isn’t your average artist website. I work across three voices: Brandon, the Creator; Abby, the Avatar; and The Site, the Witness. LOUCHE.art is where I speak as myself. It’s where I document the reality of existing. The others may distort, adapt, or fictionalize, but here—I am the source. No artistic license for sale.
I created LOUCHE.art not as a portfolio, but as a sovereign territory, part temple, part evidence locker. This is the only space where I speak as myself. Not Abby. Not “The Site.” Just Brandon. The archivist. The artist. The mind behind it all. You don’t have to believe in God. But here, I am the author of truth. And I am writing it down.
credo: from food stamps to PhD
That’s the mission in five words.
LOUCHE.art isn’t just a portfolio. It’s a protest. A promise. A plan. It’s the living archive of a queer, disabled, poor kid from Oklahoma who refuses to stay where the world put him. I’m not just making art. I’m building a life that defies every expectation placed on bodies like mine.
Right now, this platform is fueling my relocation to pursue my PhD in Art History at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, but its purpose runs deeper. LOUCHE.art is an archive. A sanctuary. A cabinet of curiosities for the broken and the brilliant. This is an intellectual curation from someone who was never supposed to make it out.
This is my proof-of-self: hand-coded, defiant, and preserving every fragment that I was told to forget. It’s the digital version of the person I was never allowed to become. Basically, it’s more than a personal journey. It’s proof of concept, and one for all of us who’ve been told, “No.”
“No, you can’t be that smart.”
“No, you can’t be that sick.”
“No, you can’t be both broken and brilliant.”
LOUCHE.art is my rebuttal.
Yes, I can, and I’m here to prove otherwise.