Jenna North

Utica, N.Y./ Washington, D.C.
Residency: August 2016

Jenna North is an interdisciplinary artist and educator who considers the vast majority of her work to function as social aesthetics. Her work is driven by a deep concern for environmental issues, and she often collaborates with a wide range of scientists and artists for public projects and her own work. North's work currently toggles between functional eco-art, painting, installation, and performance as her fracking obsessed Post-Apacolyptic Interior Decorator alter ego, Wendy Well, whom she is working on a full feature film about. 

North received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in painting and new genres. Recent awards include a CNY Arts NYSCA grant for her “Submersive Gardening” project, a residency at the National Art Gallery in Male’, Maldives where she has an ongoing project to design an ambitious rooftop mural/garden/city park to create the illusion of the ocean rising and washing over a building. She has completed residencies at Project Grant (social practice residency), Headlands Center for the Arts, Montalvo, and Root Division. She has worked with the Art in Embassy program at the State Department and recently exhibited paintings in the US Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Recent solo shows include: Art at the Palace, The Other Side, SUNY Morrisville, Mohawk Valley Community College, Red Poppy Art House, Micaela Gallery and the TransAmerica building in San Francisco, CA. Other recent shows include Artist and Makers, Rockville, MD, Otis Street Arts Project, Washington, D.C., The Silent Barn, NY, NY, The Smithy Art Gallery, Cooperstown, NY, Art Now and Bridge Fairs in Miami Beach, and NY, NY, Micaela Gallery, SFMOMA Artist Gallery, the Lab, San Fransico, We Artspace, Oakland, CA. In addition to creating and exhibiting her own work, North continues to curate cutting edge exhibitions of both professional and student artists. She shares her time between Utica, NY and Washington, D.C.