ARTIST TALK: JENNIE C. JONES

Jennie C. Jones practice mines the territory of Modernism—abstraction and minimalism; experimental jazz; and seminal political and social shifts—to reveal the complex and often parallel legacies of the mid-20th century’s social, cultural, and political experimentations. Jones brings to light the unlikely alliances that emerged between the visual arts and the imprint of jazz, highlighting the way they became and continue to exist as tangible markers of social evolution and political strivings.

Jones attended Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts where she received her Masters of Fine Art degree in 1996. Prior to that, she attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving a Bachelors of Fine Art in 1991, with Fellowship. Her awards include a Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2000 and a Creative Capital grant in 2008. She received The William H. Johnson Prize in 2008, and is the 2012 recipient of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Wein Prize. She has presented lectures at the Whitney Museum of American Art and The High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

Jones’ work has been exhibited at major art institutions including The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and Urbis Art Center in Manchester, UK among others. Her solo exhibition, Higher Resonance, was presented at The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, in Washington DC in 2013. Upcoming projects include a solo project at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, opening in December 2015.

Jones has participated in numerous prestigious artists residency and fellowship programs, both nationally and internationally, including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1996), The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency at the World Trade Center (1999), Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2002-2003), The Liguria Study Center for the Arts & Humanities in Genoa, Italy (2004), and Rauschenberg Foundation Residency in Captiva, Florida (2014). In 2008 she was a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study Center as well as a Visiting Artist at The American Academy in Rome.