By Joe Maniscalco

Jennifer Bateman Grace has thought a lot about working — the nature of work, what it means to work, and what our work means to us. Those deep meditations have now resulted in an ongoing series of whimsical YouTube video shorts about working in America today — and they’re every bit as insightful as they are fun to watch.

“I like to think of these little things as love letters to the person that I’m highlighting,” the California-based artist tells Work-Bites. “Sometimes jobs are mundane or we can feel dehumanized. Sometimes, they’re hilarious, empowering and…whatever. I just wanted to celebrate individuals who are working — whatever working means to that person.”

Interested in the idea of “play as therapy” and its ability to work out serious issues, each roughly four-minute episode of “This Is Working” consists of a single person candidly talking about their typical work day and what that experience is actually like.

Only in these illuminating incarnations, those doing the talking might appear as a red dragon, a mini-Godzilla, or maybe even a penguin — or any other number of representational figures Jennifer finds buried in her kid’s toy box.

“I have infinite respect for people who are able to work in places where maybe it’s not their dream job, but they’re finding the reasons to get up and go there, whatever that may be,” she says. “I’ve always been the kind of person, for better or worse (mostly worse) who can’t wrap my brain around thinking about things in terms of financial success. And that’s part of what I think I’m exploring.”

Like many people working in our contemporary times, Jennifer finds herself engaged in “a kind of internal struggle” with the shame she still carries having worked jobs where she never felt she belonged and the negative impact those experiences have had on her personal identity.

“I think about that a lot,” she says. “Jobs can be a means to an end; they can really just be about paying the bills. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t work at a job that’s not fulfilling; you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t feel their sense of self impacted by what they do.”

Although universal in approach, “This is Working” grew out of a very immediate and personal experience Jennifer had several years ago, following the sudden death of her spouse.

“When my husband was alive, he was really the breadwinner; and not for any traditional marriage roles kind of reasons; I really just wanted to make art and he was cool with that,” she says. “When he died, many things happened. But the financial bottom fell out. I had this real existential crisis about what it means to work and who’s compensated for what kind of work, and how we’re all compensated for that work. Those are questions that have been rolling around in my head for years now.”

Jennifer still wonders, “Why can’t I be a person who works in an office, has a 401K and just goes there — why can’t I have any number of these jobs and just be happy?

“The answer,” she says, and contrary what the current economic system would like to have us believe, is “we are not all built the same way.”

THIS IS WORKING

“I am working. This is the work I do,” Jennifer says. “I tell stories and I investigate the human experience. I also do other work — I don’t want to make it seem like my child and I are sitting in a hovel starving while I play with his toys. But this is work that I find really satisfying. And it’s been a delight to me to know it’s resonated with other people.”

It takes many hours and days to create a “This Is Working” episode. The miniature sets can be expansive and contain myriads of intricate details that give wonderful life to each character’s slice of the universe.

“That’s the stuff that I love,” Jennifer says. “Getting out tweezers to make sure this little thing is the exact angle I want it to be. I love what I’m doing so much, I don’t care if people think I’m weird or people think I am mentally unbalanced because I know what I”m doing.”

Jennifer views her interview process as a “collaboration” in which she tries to remain a “blank slate” and is careful not lead to lead interviewees in any particular direction.

“My hope is by doing it in that format they don’t feel any pressure to perform — and I don’t feel any pressure to create a story that’s forced upon the other person,” she says. “I’m really interested in the way that people talk about what they do. I’m especially interested in, not necessarily the cogent thoughts that they put together or really articulate precise things they say about their work — but the way they struggle for words sometimes, and what that could mean. For me, it’s a little bit of psychology.”

Although “This Is Working” in particular, and art in general requires lots of hard work and sweat  to create — Jennifer also views it all as very meditative.

“As I’m editing, I’m sculpting the work, taking things away, moving bits to the front or back to create something like a narrative,” she says. “I am also just trying to keep my mind respectful to the voice of the person — I never try to make jokes at a person’s expense. I think what I do can be quite funny — but my hope is it can be a celebration of the person.”

If there’s one unifying theme that keeps asserting itself among all the working people she’s interviewed for “This Is Working” so far, Jennifer says it has to be “resiliency.”

“Just the idea of people getting on with it,” she says. “There are varying degrees of interest and excitement people have toward what they do. But to me, it’s their spirit that seems unbreakable — in each of them. And that’s the thing I’m seeing and really want to celebrate.”