Celebrating her prolific sketchbook practice, People in Clothes presents a selection of artwork by Jessamie Holmes taken from her personal archive of journals. The book summons some of her countless devilish characters and reimagines them into a new fantastical format.

Jessamie’s drawings are crafted under candlelight using traditional mediums like ink and oil pastel. While drawing on art historical compositions, her practice is often intuitive and impulsive- experimenting with the conventions of traditional portraiture. The book’s experimental form and design reflects the playful dichotomies of Holmes’ work, combining traditional hand-binding methods, classic paper stocks and old-style typography with metallic page frames, pull-out postcards, fold-out sections and varied page sizes.

Interspersed throughout the book are multiple 4-page mini sections. These sections are reproduced in the exact page order and size of the original journal they were created in, paying homage to the sketchbook format. The back cover is complete with an image index which traces the origins of each artwork back to the journal of their inception, forming a numerical representation of the threads sewn between time.

Winner – Best Designed Small-Run Book, ABDA Awards 2025

Photography by Angus Brown