Jolene Dames is a self-taught artist who began her career in 1998 when hired at a local theater with no formal artistic training. She went on to work as a scenic artist painting sets for theater, television, and eventually films such as A League of Their Own, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. During these two decades in the industry, Dames has developed herself as a scenic consultant and designer. Concurrently, she has worked tirelessly as an artist in her own right specializing in large-scale paintings and assemblages. Using Pittsburgh as her primary residence, she scours the globe photographing objects that would typically go unnoticed. Then she photographs and paints them excessively large scale, and with such exciting compositions, they finally have to be acknowledged.