Sabrina Jones was born and raised in Philadelphia. Jones got a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in painting and later an M.F.A. in illustration from the School of Visual Arts in 2003. She moved to the East Village when it was still called Alphabet City and stayed for 20 years. Jones began writing and illustrating comics on the 1980s, inspired by the societal tumult of Reagan era and the revived Conservative focus on repealing abortion and other reproductive rights. She joined a group of pro-choice activist artists called Carnival Knowledge. World War 3 Illustrated co-founder Seth Tobocman convinced Sabrina to create her first comic strip for the magazine. She went on to join the editorial collective and contributed to many issues, including Bitchcraft, Female Complaints, and Life During Wartime. In the 1990s, Jones co-founded Girltalk, an anthology of women’s autobiographical comics with Ann Decker and Isabella Bannerman, published by Fantagraphics. For the Real Cost of Prisons Project, she created an educational comic, Prisoners of the War on Drugs, which inspired her to self-publish Mixed Signals, a counter-recruitment tool in comic book form. Jones created her first historical comics for Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World, Verso 2005. Her first long-form graphic novel was Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography, published in 2008. 2010 saw one of Sabrina Jones’s first collaborations with a writer, Paul Buhle. Buhle wrote the text for FDR and the New Deal for Beginners, which was illustrated entirely by Jones. It was the latest in the long line of For Beginners books. In 2013 she illustrated Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling, an adaptation of Marc Mauer's book on America's exploding imprisonment rate. Jones supplements her alternative cartoonist’s lifestyle with work as a scenic artist in the entertainment industry. She has been painting scenery for Saturday Night Live since 1994, when she joined United Scenic Artists Local 829. Most recently Jones published the book Our Lady of Birth Control in 2016.
Sabrina Jones
Studios
Adams
Sabrina Jones worked in the Adams studio.
Given to the MacDowell Association by Margaret Adams of Chicago, the half-timbered, stuccoed Adams Studio was designed by MacDowell Fellow and architect F. Tolles Chamberlin ca. 1914. Chamberlin was primarily a painter, but also provided designs for the Lodge and an early renovation of the main hall. The studio’s structural integrity was restored during a thorough renovation in…