My name is Jess Howe

and I am the Ruinous Revived. I spent the majority of my formative years exploring various different areas from environmental science to painting, graphic design, photography and so on. Every venture taught me something new but, there was still some odd emptiness despite the joy of exploring my voice in art.

      Starting out in interior design at the Fashion Institute of Technology I felt something thrilling in the exhausting, endless study of space revival. I felt the spark to the burning fire in my soul that I never wanted to put out. I fell for the idea of positively affecting someone’s everyday life by adjusting their surroundings in either total deconstruction of something, or just a simple perfect added touch. The idea that I, one person, could use my power as a designer to affect the world by focusing on sustainable designs had me feeling as though I had truly found my place in the world.

Despite awakening this new side of my artistic soul, the slight odd feeling of emptiness came back. I began pursuing my intellectual passion but my desire for physical, hands on work had begun to feel malnourished. After years of slow progression preparing for a future I knew nothing of, I needed a big step… no, a whopping leap towards something… anything.

Did this giant, whopping leap come about browsing through Craigslist? YUP. Looking at these items that others began to see as worthless in their own lives, I saw endless possibilities for a new purpose in the lives of others - either in the same form or in taking on a new improved form. This idea of reincarnation in terms of home décor and furnishings satisfied me to new ends.

  Despite awakening this new side of my artistic soul, the slight odd feeling of emptiness came back. I began pursuing my intellectual passion but my desire for physical, hands on work had begun to feel malnourished. After years of slow progression preparing for a future I knew nothing of, I needed a big step… no, a whopping leap towards something… anything.

Did this giant, whopping leap come about browsing through Craigslist? YUP. Looking at these items that others began to see as worthless in their own lives, I saw endless possibilities for a new purpose in the lives of others - either in the same form or in taking on a new improved form. This idea of reincarnation in terms of home décor and furnishings satisfied me to new ends. 

With that notion, I quit a job that I had gotten everything I possibly could out of and I chose a journey into the unknown. I had been searching for one end result, one answer to an impossible question. All the while, the answer was that there ultimately is no final answer.

    As the years have gone by since I began this journey, what exactly it means to be the Ruinous Revived has been an endless adaption. Today, Ruinous Revived is unafraid of the bold, the characteristic, the one of a kind. It is unapologetically taking some thing that once was and making it so much more. It is breathing, wearing, and living with nostalgia but, a modern twist.

Cheers to the wild ride.