Jason Simon (artist)

Jason Simon (born 1961) is an American artist.

Early life

Jason Simon was born in 1961 in Boston, Massachusetts, to parents who had emigrated from South Africa via London. His father, Morris Simon, was a radiologist and inventor, and his mother, Josephine Simon, worked in community theater and arts education, eventually creating the first Masters in Women's Studies program at the Goddard Cambridge Program for Social Change. Simon is the nephew of South African writer, playwright, and director Barney Simon. He pursued undergraduate studies in literature and film at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University's School of General Studies, from 1979 to 1984. He is a 1984–85 alumnus of the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, and earned a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California, San Diego, in 1988.

Early career and education

Simon left his undergraduate studies in 1981 to work in Cambridge, MA, for Stuart Cody, an audio engineer associated with the ethnographic film and American Direct Cinema community there. Returning to school a year later, he finished his studies at Columbia and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program while working as a sound recordist in independent film production and advertising. This period resulted in his film and video projects Production Notes: Fast Food for Thought (1987), and Artful History: A Restoration Comedy (1987). He left New York City to study at UC San Diego from 1986 to 1988.