Jess Bush

Jess Bush (born 26 March 1992) is an Australian actor, model, reality television personality, and visual artist. Her television work includes competing on the seventh season of the reality TV series Australia's Next Top Model, and playing Nurse Christine Chapel on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Personal life
Jess Bush was born on 26 March 1992, and is from Keperra, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. In speaking with The Daily Beast in mid-2023 about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds LGBTQ+ representation—and her portrayal of a bisexual character—Bush unhesitatingly told the interviewer, "I'm queer".

Visual arts career
Originally a visual artist from childhood through her mid-20s, Bush began selling her pieces professionally at age 19. She is also a jewellery designer, and some of her pieces appear on Strange New Worlds. In April 2017, Bush's studio was in Sydney's "infamous Hibernian House", she had recently returned from painting two commissioned murals in New York City, and she had received 2017's Muswellbrook Art Prize&mdash;New South Wales' second biggest art prize.

Bee Totem
In 2019, Bush began developing and exhibiting her ongoing Bee Totem series. She collects dead honey bees from beekeepers, and preserves them in spheres of crystal resin and attaching fine jewellery chains. Her exhibitions collaborate with projection artists and sound designers to hang the many preserved bees at different heights to create shapes and experiences in three-dimensional space.

For herself, Bee Totem is about recognizing and emphasizing the importance of the bees that, not only make the human world livable, but then "live by the thousands and die quietly by the thousands." The individual preserved bee in the sphere is amplified and magnified, showing its intelligence and beauty; it causes the observer to "pause and think about the moment that it died, because its frozen in that moment after its death, so its kind of like a memorial." The installation then amplifies "that impact of thousands dead at the same time".

Having received several rounds of funding from the Australian Government by 2022, Bush described it as "the most significant work that [she's] ever made" with a goal of doing so "probably forever". She would like to build a cathedral for thousands of preserved bees, to allow people to quietly sit and reflect in the immensity of sacrifice. While acting, Bush takes a hiatus from her visual art work, though she has taken her materials when shooting.

Performing arts career
Bush's first television appearance was competing on the seventh season of the reality TV series Australia's Next Top Model; she told the programme that she entered modeling for the challenge, competitiveness, travel, and variety. In Australia, she has also performed on Home and Away and Playing for Keeps.

In the early 2020s, she was "very close to stopping acting" before booking a role on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The 2022 Star Trek spin-off was her first television role outside Australia. Bush co-stars as Christine Chapel (the second actor in the role after Majel Barrett in the original Star Trek). Heavy described Bush's interpretation of the character as "very different [...] fun, irreverent, and a bit of a live wire." Bush eschews her native Australian accent for the performance, a dichotomy that helps her get into character physically and mentally.

Other professional work
Bush's work on Star Trek ignited a passion for the real-world space industry; by 2023, she was collaborating with NASA and Redwire at the Kennedy Space Center.