Bipolar Holiday Art

Signed, Dated, Titled Verso BIO: Daniel Jefferson AKA "Bipolar Holiday" is a self-taught street artist. A native of St. Louis, he grew up in North St. Louis County in the cities of Normandy and Hazelwood. By the age of 3, he was drawing and painting alongside his father and together they shared studios and collaborations into his mid-20s. His father grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi and his mother in St. Louis. Expounding on his family history, Holiday speaks of his Quaker and Native American ancestry - along with his father, who is black, and his mother who is white - as forming his multiracial identity and upbringing. He expresses “not always fitting in,” - being neither “this nor that” - and residing on the margins between the social constructs of race. This emotional state is reflected in his artistic output. He cautions us to see that, while the subject matter of his work is not always a direct depiction of his experience of race, his existence as a person of color propels him and bears directly on his artistic focus and choice of materials, along with the application and gesture in each work. Anger and sadness are part of it – also love, joy, pride and humility. The artist often signs his work with a mark inspired by the ancient Egyptian Eye of Horas – a symbol of power, protection, and health. Throughout his career, Bipolar Holiday has been both a solo practitioner and a collaborator. Tagging as King Dee and later Melo, he worked variously in the St. Louis area from the mid- 1990s to early 2000s. In the 1990s, he painted with the then St. Louis-based graffiti artist Nick Miller and his crew. Choice spots ranged from free standing concrete walls on abandoned property to temporary fencing along construction sites. The artist's compositions contained expressive line and figural elements – human faces, eyes – and the ethereal and allegorical – angel, devil motifs, etc. Later, he moved his artistic focus to a more studio-based form starting in the early 2000s. Holiday had his first show alongside his father’s work at Urbis-Orbis Gallery in downtown St. Louis in 2003. Coming full circle, he occasionally works in a few items of collage or spontaneous marks made by his daughter during her early childhood. Bipolar Holiday has exhibited his work both locally and globally including St. Louis, New York, Grand Rapids and Antwerp. In 2019, he was featured in a four-page spread of JMG Lifestyle Magazine and a large-scale work whet to the Isabis Art Expo in 2019. St. Louis Magazine listed “Bipolar Holiday: Kyoto Girls” when the Walker-Cunningham Fine Art pop-up exhibit was named to the A-List in July 2020. Holiday's work can be found in numerous private and public collections. He lives in St. Louis City...

Signed, Dated, Titled Verso BIO: Daniel Jefferson AKA "Bipolar Holiday" is a self-taught street artist. A native of St. Louis, he grew up in North St. Louis County in the cities of Normandy and Hazelwood. By the age of 3, he was drawing and painting alongside his father and together they shared studios and collaborations into his mid-20s. His father grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi and his mother in St. Louis. Expounding on his family history, Holiday speaks of his Quaker and Native American ancestry - along with his father, who is black, and his mother who is white - as forming his multiracial identity and upbringing. He expresses “not always fitting in,” - being neither “this nor that” - and residing on the margins between the social constructs of race. This emotional state is reflected in his artistic output. He cautions us to see that, while the subject matter of his work is not always a direct depiction of his experience of race, his existence as a person of color propels him and bears directly on his artistic focus and choice of materials, along with the application and gesture in each work. Anger and sadness are part of it – also love, joy, pride and humility. The artist often signs his work with a mark inspired by the ancient Egyptian Eye of Horas – a symbol of power, protection, and health. Throughout his career, Bipolar Holiday has been both a solo practitioner and a collaborator. Tagging as King Dee and later Melo, he worked variously in the St. Louis area from the mid- 1990s to early 2000s. In the 1990s, he painted with the then St. Louis-based graffiti artist Nick Miller and his crew. Choice spots ranged from free standing concrete walls on abandoned property to temporary fencing along construction sites. The artist's compositions contained expressive line and figural elements – human faces, eyes – and the ethereal and allegorical – angel, devil motifs, etc. Later, he moved his artistic focus to a more studio-based form starting in the early 2000s. Holiday had his first show alongside his father’s work at Urbis-Orbis Gallery in downtown St. Louis in 2003. Coming full circle, he occasionally works in a few items of collage or spontaneous marks made by his daughter during her early childhood. Bipolar Holiday has exhibited his work both locally and globally including St. Louis, New York, Grand Rapids and Antwerp. In 2019, he was featured in a four-page spread of JMG Lifestyle Magazine and a large-scale work whet to the Isabis Art Expo in 2019. St. Louis Magazine listed “Bipolar Holiday: Kyoto Girls” when the Walker-Cunningham Fine Art pop-up exhibit was named to the A-List in July 2020. Holiday's work can be found in numerous private and public collections. He lives in St. Louis City...

Signed, Dated, Titled Verso BIO: Daniel Jefferson AKA "Bipolar Holiday" is a self-taught street artist. A native of St. Louis, he grew up in North St. Louis County in the cities of Normandy and Hazelwood. By the age of 3, he was drawing and painting alongside his father and together they shared studios and collaborations into his mid-20s. His father grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi and his mother in St. Louis. Expounding on his family history, Holiday speaks of his Quaker and Native American ancestry - along with his father, who is black, and his mother who is white - as forming his multiracial identity and upbringing. He expresses “not always fitting in,” - being neither “this nor that” - and residing on the margins between the social constructs of race. This emotional state is reflected in his artistic output. He cautions us to see that, while the subject matter of his work is not always a direct depiction of his experience of race, his existence as a person of color propels him and bears directly on his artistic focus and choice of materials, along with the application and gesture in each work. Anger and sadness are part of it – also love, joy, pride and humility. The artist often signs his work with a mark inspired by the ancient Egyptian Eye of Horas – a symbol of power, protection, and health. Throughout his career, Bipolar Holiday has been both a solo practitioner and a collaborator. Tagging as King Dee and later Melo, he worked variously in the St. Louis area from the mid- 1990s to early 2000s. In the 1990s, he painted with the then St. Louis-based graffiti artist Nick Miller and his crew. Choice spots ranged from free standing concrete walls on abandoned property to temporary fencing along construction sites. The artist's compositions contained expressive line and figural elements – human faces, eyes – and the ethereal and allegorical – angel, devil motifs, etc. Later, he moved his artistic focus to a more studio-based form starting in the early 2000s. Holiday had his first show alongside his father’s work at Urbis-Orbis Gallery in downtown St. Louis in 2003. Coming full circle, he occasionally works in a few items of collage or spontaneous marks made by his daughter during her early childhood. Bipolar Holiday has exhibited his work both locally and globally including St. Louis, New York, Grand Rapids and Antwerp. In 2019, he was featured in a four-page spread of JMG Lifestyle Magazine and a large-scale work whet to the Isabis Art Expo in 2019. St. Louis Magazine listed “Bipolar Holiday: Kyoto Girls” when the Walker-Cunningham Fine Art pop-up exhibit was named to the A-List in July 2020. Holiday's work can be found in numerous private and public collections. He lives in St. Louis City...