Jean Isabel Smith (born 1959) is a Canadian writer, painter and the lead singer of the Vancouver band Mecca Normal.
Career
Music
Smith co-founded Mecca Normal with bandmate David Lester in 1981, while the two were working together at a Vancouver newspaper. Mecca Normal is considered a forerunner of the 1990s politically charged riot grrrl movement.
Painting
Smith has continued the self-portrait series in watercolour, video and photography, including photos from her online dating profiles in her short film Attraction is Ephemeral — the title of a song on Mecca Normal's 2006 album The Observer.
She began a series of paintings in 2016 to the present that she sells each day via Facebook posts to raise money to create an artist residency in Vancouver.