Jeudi Cornejo Brealey
"Vintage-Voiced Chanteuse", Intersectional Artist Entrepreneur: Nostalgia Peddler, Lost Music Purveyor, Archivist, Storyteller, Director, Producer, Writer.
Bonne Vivante, Empath, Optimist.
Intersectional Artist
Jeudi is a professional and lifelong intersectional artist, nostalgia peddler, lost music purveyor, and would-be time-traveler, whose artistic and personal identity was profoundly shaped by her rich Latin cultural heritage, which continues to inform her vintage lifestyle, family life and art practice. She creates at the intersection of visual and performing arts, believing that all art is storytelling and that the story dictates the medium.
Origin Story
A native Californian, born and raised in San Diego, Jeudi's the youngest of five child (and only daughter) in a large Latin family.
Her homemaker mother often spoke of her WW2 adolescence; filled with USO swing dance contests, working in an airplane factory and living through loss, deprivations and challenges. Meanwhile, her entrepreneur father waxed philosophical and wise-cracked as he recounted the adventures of his youth, from being a child-laborer, to exploring the jungles of Costa Rica, to eventually working as a pole-and-line tuna fisherman during WW2, which led to a green card. Jeudi spent countless hours pouring over her parents' b/w photo albums, where everyone was stylish and everything looked so intriguing; familiar yet different.
She attributes her wistful artistic leanings to: Times spent in Barrio Logan at her Tata's house, daydreaming of the past as she listened to the Victrola; spending most of her childhood in hand-me-downs; and being introduced to the Great American Songbook as she daily pumped the foot pedals on her family’s player piano, singing along with piano roll songs from the 1920s and 30s.
Family of Raconteurs
The extended family mostly lived nearby and the cousins all blended together like siblings with multiple parents. Jeudi was the kid who preferred to have a chair drawn up to the family table listening to the adults’ stories. As a daughter and grandchild of Latin immigrants, her’s was a family of great raconteurs, who delighted in sharing familial origin stories. These were tales of hard times and heartbreak, but also ingenuity, romance, resilience, resolve and triumph. And wit was woven throughout each one. Often the humor came from seeing how ingenuity was applied to outwit a particular situation or circumstance.
As an empath and sentimentalist, Jeudi's favorite part of the adult conversation was when the stories would turn to magic realism, mystery and miracles. In each home, saints lived side-by-side with the family and altars were ever present and lovingly tended to by the mothers. These strong women also passed on traditions of herbal healing, gardening and art making, along with family recipes and lore.
Archivist - Keeper of the Kin
Jeudi sees her family as her superpower, priority, source of innovation, strength, and sanctuary. Most of the family elders have passed on. Now she is the family archivist, keeper of the stories, and steward to the sacred duty and task of preserving history, chronicling the past, and creating bridges to the present. She is deeply rooted in genealogical pursuits, restoring family rituals along with photographs, reinstating traditions and transcending language limitations.
Memoryscapes & Altars
In tribute to her immigrant roots, and as a touchstone and homage to past generations, Jeudi carries on this family tradition of storytelling by creating carefully woven lyrical and atmospheric 'memoryscapes' that serve as bridges between the past and present. Physically these often take the form of altars, tableaux and vignettes. She is keenly interested in the tension between the ephemeral and the generational, the illusory and the actual.
Passion & Curiosity
This passion and curiosity for the past informs all apsects of her work and life. Drawing upon extensive research, Jeudi highlights forgotten works and narratives and investigates family dynamics, cross-cultural identity and legacy. Her work centers on themes of love, family, identity, inclusion and Spirit, and does so with heart and humor.
Artistic Assemblage & Hybridity
A trained artist who earned her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from the prestigious California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), she continues this practice of hybridity. In translating the traditional methods of “assemblage” to the stage, the artist curates and creates a unique context for “found” songs and references, bridging them in a context of historical facts, and personal observations. Her performance work often centers on creating atmospheric works and employs theatrical vignettes, tableaux, photography, poetic language and music, as an entry to fragmented memories and deep emotions -- encouraging the viewer to actively participate and to traverse time and memory via song. As a professional singer, historic researcher, documentarian, dramaturg, archivist, and self- proclaimed “musical archaeologist,” she derives great satisfaction in unearthing and presenting forgotten and little know musical gems to a modern audience.
Vintage-Voiced Chanteuse
In the lane of music, she goes by the single name of "Jeudi" and has been given the moniker of “Vintage-Voiced Chanteuse”, who's know for singing salvaged sweet jazz, sourced from a time when the dance floor was the ultimate social platform, and the prospect of romance was just a Fox Trot, Charleston, or Lindy Hop away. An old soul with notable nostalgic leanings, Jeudi’s voice exudes the romance of an Old Hollywood picture. She transports audiences through song, as “she evokes the old-school thrush, who sings with the band,” refreshing timeless standards and forgotten musical gems with her sentimental and swinging interpretations.
Living Artfully
An optimist and bonne vivante, who is intrinsically creative and makes it a goal to live artfully, Jeudi sees art and gratitude as dual forms of praying without ceasing. She seeks to bring light and levity to others through her work, and to lift the vibrational energy of the planet. This is one of the central concerns of her art and spiritual practice.
Home and Yonder
She lives in Southern California with her husband, award-winning director/ producer, Paul Hemstreet and co-founder with Jeudi of their family-based art collective, Home And Yonder - - which you may explore on the home page. They enjoy life with their twins, animator Gustavo Hemstreet and evolutionary biologist environmentalist, Joaquine Hemstreet, and their corgi, Winston, who regularly makes cameos in Jeudi’s music videos.
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