Jerome Bailey Jr. is a multidisciplinary artist and poet whose practice moves across handwritten language, painting, performance, and installation.

Working from the conviction that language must be felt before it can be written, Bailey builds a body of work in which the poem is not the final form — it is the origin. From that origin, the work becomes painting, performance, spoken word, and object, existing simultaneously as literature and visual art. Each discipline stands on its own. Together, they complete the argument.

Bailey studied journalism at Dillard University, New Orleans (B.A.), and earned his Master of Science in Journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, New York — one of the most selective journalism programs in the world. His reporting career took him through the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and theGrio, where he developed the discipline of finding the real story and cutting it to the sentence that matters. That training is the architecture beneath the art.

He launched his studio practice in 2024 with RECLAIMED, his first official collection. In 2026, he presented MORTAR, his debut solo exhibition, at Winter Street Studios, Houston. The same year, Bailey was selected as a featured artist within Our Road Home: Gallery as Instrument — Fresh Arts' 2026 Space Taking Artist Residency, led by pioneering stepping choreographer, director, and ethnochoreologist Jakari Sherman. Within that eight-week program at Winter Street Studios, Bailey presented a solo exhibition of his work. Also in 2026, he performed at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts — Houston's flagship performing arts venue and home to the city's Broadway season — on two separate occasions, in January and March.

His work has been exhibited in group exhibitions including RECLAIMED at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, in 2024. His paintings and poetry have entered private collections across the United States, Europe, and beyond — independently, without gallery representation.

In 2019, Bailey released Liberation, a full-length poetry collection that sold over 2,000 copies independently across international markets. The book is carried by the African American Museum of New Orleans, where Bailey has performed on multiple occasions between 2022 and 2024 — a sustained relationship with one of the Gulf South's most significant institutions dedicated to Black art and culture. In 2021, he released Expressions, a spoken word performance art album. He has been featured in Subo Art Magazine (2023) and has appeared on KHOU 11 / Great Day Houston, Morning Dose on The CW, and WWL-TV New Orleans.

Bailey has performed internationally, including at Universidad de La Frontera in Temuco, Chile; Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana; and Friedrich Schiller Universität in Jena, Germany — all in connection with the Melton Foundation, the international nonprofit organization promoting global citizenship through a network of fellows across more than forty countries.

His work proceeds from a single discipline: nothing is written down that does not move him first.

Available for collector inquiries, institutional review, and curatorial consideration.