Other of Pearl, Kendler’s first solo exhi­bi­tion in New York City, trans­forms the mag­a­zine of Governors Island's Fort Jay into a space for slow explo­ration. Here you will encounter sev­en inti­mate and del­i­cate works, includ­ing a hand­blown glass instru­ment where you can sing in the voice of a whale and pearl sculp­tures grown inside oys­ters. At the con­clu­sion of the exhi­bi­tion, the pearl sculp­tures will be auc­tioned to raise funds to help cre­ate a new oys­ter reef — redis­trib­ut­ing resources in a ges­ture of eco­log­i­cal restora­tion — in part­ner­ship with the Bil­lion Oys­ter Project.

Other of Pearl was featured as a Critic's Notebook pick on the front page of the print New York Times, and covered in Time Out, The Art Newspaper and more.

From June 13th–Nov 3rd, 2024 the exhibition was seen by over 16,000 visitors.

In the fall of 2023, Kendler was named a 3Arts Awardee, a nominated honor given to only two visual artists annually, which comes along with an unrestricted $30,000 grant. You can learn more about 3Arts and see Kendler's awardee profile here.

Above: Kendler finalizing placement for the eye of the climate-threatened snowy owl on Birds Watching III, as featured in London's print newspaper The Times

More compiled press for Dear Earth is indexed on Coverage Book.

Kendler's work was included in the major exhibition Dear Earth: Art & Hope in a Time of Crisis at the Hayward Gallery at London's South bank Centre. For the museum-wide exhibition, Kendler created two commissioned works—both shown on the Queen Elizabeth sculpture court, overlooking the Waterloo Bridge—the 40 ft long sculpture Birds Watching III and the interactive sound piece Tell it to the Birds, re-conceived from the 2014 original of the work.

The exhibition included artists Ackroyd & Harvey, Andrea Bowers, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Agnes Denes, John Gerrard, Cristina Iglesias, Aluaiy Kaumakan, Jenny Kendler, Richard Mosse, Otobong Nkanga, Cornelia Parker, Himali Singh Soin, Hito Steyerl, Daiara Tukano and Grounded Ecotherapy and was curated by chief curator Rachel Thomas, alongside Assistant Curator Marie-Charlotte Carrier and Curatorial Assistant Debbie Meniru.

The day after the opening, which was attended by over 800 people, Kendler's work was featured in the print newspapers The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and the Financial Times. She was also interviewed for the BBC Radio 4 podcast Inside Science.



Image Credit: Morley von Sternberg

Birds Watching is being recreated as a site-specific sculptural work for The Eden Project in Cornwall, UK, a non-profit with the mission to educate the public about the natural world and the transition to an ecologically just future.

The 40-foot, reflective sculpture will open in late July, 2019 with a new set of 100 birds threatened or endangered by climate change—updated to encompass the UK and EU and conform to the latest climate science.

Clearly I had a good time being interviewed on the 606, in front of Birds Watching—alongside Gavin Van Horn, the Creative Director of The Center for Humans and Nature, for an episode of the nationally-syndicated radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge, focusing on 'Eye-to-Eye Animal Encounters.'

To The Best Of Our Knowledge is a Peabody award-winning radio show where long-form interviews dive headlong into the deeper end of ideas. They have "conversations with novelists and poets, scientists and software engineers, journalists and historians, filmmakers and philosophers, artists and activists—anyone with a big idea and a passion to have a creative and engaging conversation about it."

In June, 2019 was invited to be a speaker at The Role of Art in the Environmental Crisis symposium organized by Dr. Julie Reiss of Christie's Education in NYC. Other artist guest speakers included Janet Biggs, Justin Brice Guariglia, Zaria Forman, Aurora Robson and a keynote by Mary Miss. Highlighted art/science partnership speakers included Elizabeth Corr, Director of Artistic Partnerships for the NRDC and Miranda Massie, Director of The Climate Museum, New York.

See the other 'best of' images here.

Birds Watching was featured as the home page of Audubon.org for a number of weeks. Read the feature here.

Excited to announce that I'll be creating a new large-scale work for Indicators: Artists on Climate Change which will open at Storm King on May 19th and run through mid-November. The project, organized by curators Nora Lawrence, David Collens & Sarah Diver was just formally announced in the New York Times, and will feature two projects by myself (one inside the museum, one outdoors) alongside work by Maya Lin, David Brooks, Mary Mattingly, Mike Nelson, Mark Dion, Tavares Strachan, Steve Rowell, Justin Brice Guariglia, Ellia Ga and the Dear Climate Collective

I'm pleased to announce that I've been invited by the wonderful Janine Mileaf to create a new ecologically-engaged project for the public-facing garden space of the Arts Club of Chicago. The project will open in early August and be on display through October.

Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is pleased to announce it is the co-recipient of a $140k grant from the Humanities Without Walls consortium administered by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. Beginning in April 2018, Gallery 400 will present Garden for a Changing Climate, a mobile public art project and interactive event series conceived by artist Jenny Kendler in six community sites throughout Chicago. Comprised of a series of moveable planters of Native Midwestern species, Garden for a Changing Climate directly embodies the otherwise largely invisible, slow and dispersed threat of climate change.

A collaboration between University of Illinois at Chicago faculty Hannah Higgins, University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty Noah Feinstein, Gallery 400 director Lorelei Stewart, and Chicago-based artist Jenny Kendler, Garden for a Changing Climate fuses interdisciplinarity, formal and informal education, museum commissioning and programming, and the creation of a new artwork using a central effect of climate change to demonstrate how interdisciplinarity across art, science, education, and social science can model pedagogy in an arts-based interdisciplinary undergraduate curriculum and create effective education about the changing climate, its impact on their lives, and how they can join mitigation efforts. In addition to presenting a large-scale public artwork at several sites throughout the city, the project will provide a CPS classroom curriculum for student engagement; facilitate coursework at UIC and UWM; and present a series of public programs to educate communities of Chicago residents on the impact of climate change and about potential ways to join in climate change mitigation.

"One of the roadblocks on the way to helping the public to truly understand the impacts of climate change is how intangible it may seem right now. But artists, scientists and educators are very good at making the invisible visible," said artist Jenny Kendler.

The grant is part of the Humanities Without Walls research challenge "The Work of the Humanities in a Changing Climate," centering around a broad question that resonates with many contemporary humanist scholars—namely, what is the work of the humanities in a changing climate? Humanities Without Walls funded projects demonstrate how the “applied humanities,” through collaborations of artists, scholars in the humanities, and scientists can contribute to the work on climate change, arguably the most pressing grand challenge of our time.

The project will be a series of events open to the public beginning April 22nd on the UIC campus and running through the fall in partnership with four other community partners, with which the events and sculptural planters are being co-created.

In August, I was interviewed on live radio by Jerome McDonnell for WBEZ's Worldview program on NPR to speak about my public project, See the Forest (for the trees) — an outdoor sculptural garden featuring biochar (above), a coded message, and seven native Illinois trees. You can listen to the interview here.

Katie Dupere interviewed me for Mashable's Earth Day feature on my work to bridge art & activism. You can read the full article here.

Lori Waxman reviewed the Chicago Biennial, in which I am participating, for the Chicago Tribune. You can find the full text of the article here.

See images of my work in the show here, and find more on the 18 other participating artists, who I am pleased and humbled to have my work alongside, here.

Above: Kendler adjusts solar-powered UV lights. Image credit: Alton Strupp, for the Courier-Journal, where it was featured on the front page

Field of Vision is a new public art commission for the city of Louisville and their Commission on Public Art, sited on the city's downtown riverwalk, on the banks of the Ohio River. The project opened on August 28th and is part of Connect|Disconnect, an exhibit of five large-scale public projects. The other Connect|Disconnect artists are Mark Reigelman II, Simparch, Mary Carothers & Jean Shin.

Read more about the project and see images here.

Connect|Disconnect was the front page story of The Courier-Journal, Louisville's main newspaper, on the day of the project opening.

Field of Vision was also a finalist in SxSW Eco's Place by Design competition. You can watch the video of Kendler's presentation at SxSW here.

Above: Western New York citizens share their seed packets on Instagram

ReWilding New York was commissioned by Aaron Ott, Curator of Public Art, as part of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's Public Arts Initiative. Ten Seed Stations containing free packets of seeds will be situated in locations throughout Western New York, with the goal of planting over a million native wildflowers throughout the region.

You can see images from this in-progress project and read more about it here.

The project has also been covered in a number of news sources, including The Buffalo News, and Western New York's alternative paper, The Public, where my floral photo mural was featured on the cover.

Fifteen pieces of mine, some brand new (including maquettes for a new large-scale project with the Chicago Parks District) are included in the DePaul Art Museum's exhibit Rooted in Soil.

There will also be a public performance of Milkweed Dispersal Balloons at the museum on April 11th from 1-3pm, followed by a panel discussion with NRDC's Manager of Arts Partnerships, Elizabeth Corr and Senior Attorney Rebecca Riley, moderated by animal studies scholar Dr. Giovanni Aloi, from 3:30-4:30pm. More info, here.

From the museum's site: Soil is omnipresent: a life-sustaining but overlooked medium whose cycle of decomposition and regeneration forms the very basis of life itself. Yet human activities such as large-scale farming and deforestation are compromising the health of soil on a global scale. This exhibition will bring together works by contemporary artists that explore multiple aspects of soil, documenting natural processes and human interventions, and proposing radically innovative solutions that combine leading-edge scientific approaches and fresh artistic and philosophical perspectives.

Artists include: Jane Fulton Alt, Vaughn Bell, Edward Burtynsky, John Gerrard, Julia Goodman, Jenny Kendler, Jae Rhim Lee, Sally Mann, Vik Muniz, Claire Pentecost, Justin Rang, Arthur Rothstein, Linda Swanson, Sam Taylor-Johnson, and Adriaen van Utrecht, plus a special installation by Chicago Wildsounds.

The show runs from January 29 – April 26, 2015. More information here.

Above: The mural became a very popular on Instagram during gray winter days

A Place of Light & Wind (for Lost Prairies) is the third large scale public work I have created while Artist-in-Residence with environmental non-profit NRDC. This one takes the form of a 38 ft interactive mural of Illinois prairie flowers, which uses QR code technology to allow passers by to scan the mural's pollinators and receive free native seeds in the mail — spreading the vision of the mural to backyards all over Chicago.

Above: Jazzmine Beaulieu photographed me in my sustainable home (in a former parking meter factory) for Netherlands-based travel magazine, Columbus. Also had a lot of fun being interviewed by Mark for the accompanying article, on Chicago as seen through the eyes of locals.

I am honored to be the subject of The Chicago Reader's feature article this week. Journalist Sam Worley took a lot of time with me, and I really appreciate the amount of research he put into writing this 6-page article. You can read it, and watch the video (shot by Chicago Reader staffer Peter Holderness) here: "The Natural Selection of Jenny Kendler"

Ghost Nature, a book published by Green Lantern Press, features my work, alongside a number of other artists who were featured in the group show of the same name at Gallery 400 in Chicago and La Box in Bourges, France.

The book features essays by artists and philosophers including Timothy Morton, Graham Harman, Laurie Palmer, João Florêncio, Nettrice Gaskins, Jamila Woods, and Caroline Picard.

Learn more and purchase a copy for $20 here.

Above: Kendler with studio mates Stacia Yeapanis and Brent Fogt at EXPO's Vernissage opening party. Image credit: Paul Germanos for Chicago Art World

I recently represented NRDC, where I am artist-in-residence this year, at EXPO Chicago. The 40 ft booth contained an exhibit of 25 of my Camouflage bird sculptures shown against a custom lichen print wallpaper I designed — as well as a 10 ft interactive piece entitled Tell it to the Birds which invited visitors to 'make a confession to the natural world' that was then translated into bird song. See/hear more about the project, here.

Milkweed Dispersal Balloons, my first project as artist-in-residence with NRDC, was a big success at Marfa Dialogues/St.Louis, with us giving out hundreds of milkweed seed-filled biodegradable balloons to participants both at the Tower Grove Farmer's Market and at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. People were engaged and excited to learn about how they can help monarchs, who are in severe decline due to pesticide use, habitat loss and climate change. At the Pulitzer, I was pleased to see the balloons 'hanging out' next to a giant Richard Serra piece. It was quite a contrast.

Milkweed Dispersal Balloons was featured in many news sources, and I was interviewed by NPR as well as a KPLR, a local TV station (live!).

The project will come to Chicago at the DePaul Art Museum in April of 2015. Stay tuned by following on Facebook at facebook.com/jenny.kendler. You can see images from our two performances in St. Louis, here.

Above: An image from NRDC's Save the Monarchs campaign

Beginning in 2014, I will be Artist-in-Residence at NRDC (National Resource Defense Council) -- one of the nation's largest environmental organizations, and a huge force for positive change with over 1.4 million members. I am honored to be the organization's first A.I.R., and grateful for their generous initial $15,000 grant in support of the residency.

During the residency I will collaborate with conservation scientists, lawyers & activists working on biodiversity and climate and travel to on-site conservation efforts, including lobbying in DC. I hope to use this platform to create projects that nurture more intimate relationships with the natural world, raise awareness on the the extinction crisis & (perhaps literally) plant the seeds for radical change. More news to follow on projects & events which will come of the residency in the coming year.

My thanks go to Elizabeth Corr, Manager of Art Partnerships & Events, for her part in creating the residency, and for her continuing passionate advocacy for artist/activist partnerships. Please come visit NRDC's booth at EXPO Chicago, and stay tuned for their upcoming project this fall with NYC's Creative Time & Maya Lin.

Please mark your calendars for the opening of my upcoming show of new sculptural works, which will also include a brand new large-scale drawing.

Opening
Friday October 4th, 2013
starting at 6pm onwards

Salon-style Dinner & Discussion
Fri, October 11th 7pm
(Get an invite to buy tickets, here.)

Show Dates
October 4th - November 3rd, 2013

SALON SERIES Projects is located at FLATS Studio:
1319 W. Wilson, Chicago, IL
Please contact gallerist JC Steinbrunner for more information.

Attempted Transformation, my commissioned public art project for Chicago Artists Coalition and Pitchfork Music Festival was seen by nearly 50,000 festival attendees (and possibly Bjork!) and featured in a huge image in The Chicago Tribune.

Thanks to everyone who was brave enough to enter a furry tent in such hot weather and attempt to transform into an animal. Best transformations include "jumping spider," "poisonous tree frog," "buffalo womb" and "sexy kelp"...which is not technically an animal, but I'm the last person to be species-ist.

EXCHANGE attempts to forge new links between the art communities of Midwestern sister cities Detroit & Chicago.

The Chicago component of the show was up in January at CAC and featured Design 99 (known for their Power House projects in Detroit), Scott Hocking (a good friend and great artist), Jessica Frelinghuysen, Chido Johnson, Nicola Kuperus & Adam Lee Miller (also of the band ADULT), Faina Lerman, Taurus Burns, Clinton Snider, Vince Troia and Graem Whyte.

My work will be in the Detroit component of the show at a great little artspace called Public Pool. The show is in two parts in Detroit, both at Public Pool and at CAVE and features the work of CAC 2011-12 BOLT Residents Melika Bass, Sarah Belknap & Joseph Belknap, Gwynne Johnson, Jenny Kendler, Homa Shojaie, Kathryn Trumbull Fimreite, Eric Wall and Stacia Yeapanis.

More info available on the show's website.

Opening
February 23, 2012
CAVE, 6-9pm; Public Pool, 7-10pm

Show Dates
February 23-March 16, 2013

Public Pool is located at:
3309 Caniff Street, Hamtramck, MI 48212
313.405.7665
Contact curator Jaqueline Chao for more info at jacqueline@chicagoartistscoalition.org

Wow. Almost 100,000 copies of The Chicago Reader with my piece on the cover will be available tomorrow, Thursday January 17th, 2013. I am excited to be so close to Savage Love.

Read Alicia Chester's article for ArtSlant here and Alicia Eler's article for Hyperallergic, here.

The Hall of Disappearing is a solo show of my new sculptural works on view at The Chicago Artists' Coalition until Nov. 1st. You can read the press release here.

The Hall of Disappearing was a "Critic's Pick" in Time Out Chicago, a Weekly Pick at ChiCritics and was on Bad at Sports' Top 5 list. You can read critic Sam Worley's review of the show for The Chicago Reader, here and Alicia Eler's review for Hyperallergic here.

Opening
Friday Oct. 12th, 6-9pm

Chicago Artists' Month Tour
Thursday Oct. 18th, 6-8pm

Gallery Hours
Mon. to Fri. 9am - 5pm
and Sat. noon - 5pm

Chicago Artists' Coalition
217 N. Carpenter Street, Chicago, IL 60607
CTA: Green or Pink line to Morgan stop
312-491-8888
cortney@chicagoartistscoalition.org

I am excited to announce that I'll be one of the four artists collaborating with amazing chefs to create collaborative artwork/edibles pairings for this year's Starving Artist event at The CAC.

FEATURED ARTIST & CHEF PAIRINGS:

• Jenny Kendler + Executive Chef Beverly Kim of Michelin-starred restaurant Bonsoirée
• Laura Letinsky + Food Preservationist Tara Lane of Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
• Jeanne Dunning + Executive Chef Jared Van Camp of Nellcote
• Erik Peterson + Sous Chef/Head Butcher Erling Wu-Bower of The Publican

Last year’s inaugural Starving Artist event featured the following ARTIST & CHEF PAIRINGS:

Painter Richard Hull + Stephanie Izard of Girl & the Goat
Sculptor Lauren Brescia + Hilary Blanchard-Rikower of one sixty blue
Painter Tim Anderson + Koren Grieveson of Avec
Painter Judy Ledgerwood + Randy Zweiban of Province

UPDATE: The event was a huge success and "Pair Bond" was won in auction by a wonderful collector. Beverly and I were on ABC7 news to promote the event, which was a truly strange experience. Everyone loved the dish we collaborated on: a "nest" of kimchi and spaghetti squash savory pancake with mock poisonous yellow lichen and a gorgeous preserved "century" quail egg. A good time was had by all!

More info here.

I was recently interviewed about my art practice in general for 60 Inches From Center's Chicago Arts Archive, and about The Endangered Species Print Project specifically by Eco-Now. You can read the two interviews here and here, respectively.

Here's an excerpt from Lori Waxman's Chicago Tribune review of "Aftermath," a group show that I was in at BOLT:

Small spaces sometimes hold more thrills and provocations than ought to be physically possible. Perhaps those fairies are real after all.

The secondary gallery at the back of the Chicago Artists' Coalition is such a place right now. Inside is a group show, curated by artist couple Stephanie Burke and Jeriah Hildwine, featuring work by seven members of the nascent BOLT residency program.

"Aftermath" excites because artists such as Jenny Kendler and filmmaker Melika Bass are some of the most promising emergent practitioners in Chicago right now, and what they do as part of BOLT will signal the worth of a much-awaited program.

Read the full review here.

I'm very pleased to be doing a show in my home town @ ADA Gallery - run by the wonderful John Pollard, also of Mulherin + Pollard Gallery (where I was recently in the group show Mundus Incognita) in NYC's Lower East Side.

Here's the Press Release from the show:

In Archipelago, Kendler’s intricate works suggest the possibility of a visceral and intimate relationship with nature. Cross-pollinating drawing, sculpture and installation, Kendler employs the visual languages of fragility, complexity and ornamentation to echo the mysterious relationships of the natural world.  

The stories in Kendler’s work are like those found in nature: enigmatic half-narratives -- often deeply uncanny. Her work reminds us that no matter how close we keep it, nature always surprises. As products of our environment, that strangeness is also within us.

Kendler’s detailed watercolor drawings of ‘islands’ give the show its title, Archipelago. Upon each floating landscape, an ecosystem’s story is played out.

Kendler has also created a series of sculptural objects culled from these drawn environments. Pennants commemorating extinct animals appear in the drawings as well as in the gallery space, made from brass and lacy-cutouts on translucent film. Other works in Archipelago include an installation based on the elaborate and colorful constructions of bower birds, the only animals know to make aesthetic choices to impress their mates.

With Archipelago, Kendler asks not just how do we as human beings affect nature, but how does nature affect us? She suggests that if we lose our connection to nature, then the human experience becomes impoverished. If we lose the wild, we may also lose the wildness within ourselves.

Archipelago is free and open to the public, and will be on view until December 31st.

Artists' Reception
Thursday Nov. 26th, 6-9pm

Gallery Hours
Wed. to Sat. 12-6 PM
and by appointment
(call to confirm)

ADA Gallery
228 West Broad Street
Richmond, VA 23220
804.644.0100
info@adagallery.com

Yikes, we're blowing up the Trib! OtherPeoplesPixels, the company that makes my website, is a creation of myself & my husband. You can learn more about our mission to help artists, social justice & the environment in this lovely article published in the Arts Section of the Chicago Tribune on Sept. 1st. Be sure to click through to the second page...

Lauren Viera at the Chicago Tribune wrote a great article on the CAC where I am in residence for the next year at the BOLT Residency. Thanks also to the very nice Trib staff photographer Phil Velazquez who took the photo of me holding my drawing 'Oh, Give me a Home.'

I'll be a visiting artist from July 25th-28th at ACRE, where aside from the standard visiting artist jazz, I'll be giving a workshop and leading a walk on wild foraging --- one of my many areas of nature-nerdism. The wonderful kitchen witches will be incorporating what we hunt up into the evening's meal.

My husband Brian will also be giving an awesome workshop on bike maintenance & helping with tune-ups! A good time shall be had by all.

Come by Mulherin + Pollard to see me & some of my drawings in Mundus Incognita, a group show which I'll be in with artists Chuck Yuen, Chris Norris, Ernest Concepcion, Rob Lee & Garyt Shiflett in the Freeman Alley Gallery. Also, be sure to check out Fat Fingers, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Daniel Davidson in their Chrystie Street Gallery.

Both exhibitions will run from Wednesday July 13 through Sunday August 7th.

Artists' Reception
Thursday July 21st : 6-9pm

Gallery Hours
Wed. to Sat. 12-6 PM, Sun. 1-5 PM

Mulherin + Pollard
187 Chrystie Street
New York, NY 10002
212.967.0045
mulherinpollard@gmail.com

I have an upcoming solo show at Johalla Projects in Chicago, for which I'm hard at work in the studio on some exciting new pieces. Larger scale, new mediums, more magic. Put it in your calendar people.

Opening Reception
Friday, July 1st : 7pm-10pm

Gallery Hours
July 4th-6th : 12pm - 5pm

Johalla Projects
1561 North Milwaukee Avenue
Chicago, Illinois, 60622
johallaprojects@gmail.com

Endangered Species Print Project is taking over the West Coast! This summer we have shows at both Kristi Engle Gallery in Los Angeles and Root Division in San Francisco.

Check out the gallery websites, linked to above, for more info.

ESPP has raised over $7000 (!!!) so far to support biodiversity and conservation efforts. Purchase a limited-edition art print to help us meet our $10k goal.

Through ACRE Gallery, I will have works on display in the gallery's booth at The MDW Fair and in their flatfiles at NEXT. More info on The MDW Fair here and NEXT here.

I performed a piece entitled Death Bear Ritual as part of Death Rites, a program curated at Roxaboxen by the wonderful Young Joon Kwak. Young also showed works from his series Eating Without a Face, which included organic sculptures and beautiful photos of compost. You can see my favorite piece here.

Just got back from having an amazing time, making lots of work and meeting incredible people at ACRE (Artists' Cooperative Residency & Exhibitions).

There was a campfire in a field of 5 foot tall Queen Anne's Lace during a heat lighting storm, a rope swing at a flooded river, local veggie cuisine, and hiking galore. Perfection.

You can find out more info about this amazing program, here.

There, Now it Will Last Forever is an exhibition of works by some of Chicago's most motivated and environmentally-minded artists. The exhibition includes drawings, paintings, collage, objects and installations.

Join us as we delve into human nature in relation to the natural environment; our inherent connection as animals dependent on the earth for survival and the disconnection created by technology, self & society.

Participating Artists: Steven Eichhorn, James Harry Ewert Jr, Ron Ewert, Mike Fortress, Jenny Kendler, Michael Ruggirello, Ben Speckmann, Davey Sommers, Scott Thomas, Ina Weise and INDO.

Opening Party
June 25, 2010 : 7pm–12am

Show Run
June 25 - July 9, 2010 : Mon thru Fri: 1–6pm

The Family Room
1821 W Hubbard St #202 : Chicago, IL

The Family Room is free & open to the public.

Early Thaw of the Northwest Passage, an installation by collaborators Jenny Kendler and Linsey Burritt, explores the space between historical and contemporary conceptions of the Arctic — a place which remains both a romanticized and unknown realm of wonder and terror, while simultaneously representing the objective reality of Climate Change. The Northwest Passage becomes a conceptual vehicle throughout the work, echoed by other passages: a passage for the movement of breath, passages to view the unknown, the act of passage as a way to new understanding.

Upon entering the gallery, the viewer finds themselves outside an ice cave constructed of meticulously folded origami forms. Secret portals allow one to to peer into the cave's dream-like interiors, through the snow-frosted exterior gallery window or hand-crafted golden telescopes.

These hidden worlds suggest a visceral bodily understanding of nature, born of surrender into this territory of otherness. This form of 'peripheral' observance nurtures an alternate method for the exploration of our relationship to this sublime otherness, where melting no longer connotes an act of loss, but becomes a generative act, blending disparate elements into a new whole.

The gallery walls will host prints by The Endangered Species Print Project, including works by founders Molly Schafer & Jenny Kendler and many other artists For each print, the number created mirrors the population of the animal/plant depicted, with 100% of print sales supporting that species's future survival.

Check out the newest issue of the fantastic Annalemma Magazine to see four commissioned works of mine, as well as many other goodies, including some great short fiction. You can order #6 or check out their other issues here.

I have a piece in an upcoming group show by curators Andy Cushman and Leah Dixon. They run this amazing project called Grey Market that creates pop-up galleries in non-traditional spaces. Their first exhibition had 400 visitors, and took place in an abandoned counterfeit designer handbag store near Penn Station. Fabulous, right?

Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, Heart will feature 15 artists dealing with the ambiguity and pitfalls in being an urban artist, and the notions of being "green". This exhibition temporarily inhabits a dance studio in the Lower East Side, and will open with what should be a really really good New Year's Eve Party. If you're in the area, do be sure to attend!

I was interviewed about my work for the lovely and well-designed ParasolMag. This issue is full of beautiful work by many creative people, and I'm honored to be a part of it. ParsolMag is an online publication by Yasmine Surovec, creator of the popular A Print A Day blog. You can see the ParasolMag site here or download the issue directly here.

Cohabit, a solo show of my new drawing work, opens Oct. 22nd at the COOP in Chicago's West Loop.

Coincidentally, opening the same night, I also have three pieces in a group show on environmental issues and climate change, titled Art for Sustainability, at North Eastern University in Boston, MA.

Fellow artist Molly Schafer and I have been working for some time on a collaboration called The Endangered Species Print Project. We're finally ready to go public, so please go check it out!

The Endangered Species Print Project offers limited edition prints of critically endangered species.

The number of prints available corresponds with the remaining animal or plant populations. For example, only 30 Amur Leopards remain in the wild, so for this edition, only 30 prints will ever be made.

All proceeds from ESPP are donated to conservation organizations. A different organization, whose mission is to the ensure the survival of the specie depicted, is chosen for each print.

We are actively looking for ways to promote the project, so please contact us at espp@EndangeredSpeciesPrintProject.com if you're interested in lending a paw...

We have already received major interest from the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Sierra Club will posted about ESPP on their blog and will be publishing an article on the project in SIERRA Magazine. We'll also possibly work with them on a print to support their conservation efforts.

CforBD has also tapped Molly and I to work with them on a very special (and perhaps I should say, unusual) TBA project. More on that later. Very exciting!

I was interviewed for Bear Deluxe Magazine's recent contemporary art issue about my work and my art blog Wunderkammer.

The Bear Deluxe is a national, independent environmental magazine publishing significant works of reporting, creative nonfiction, literature, visual art and design. Based in the Pacific Northwest, The Bear Deluxe reaches across cultural and political divides to engage readers on vital issues affecting the environment.

A collaborative drawing titled "Lemurs Fighting Deforestation" that I created with Molly Schafer was chosen to be a part of Exit Art's show "It's Not Easy." The drawing depicts a lemur army, armed to the teeth and ready to battle for the forests they call their home.

Some of my new work will be included in the Garden of Delights show which will be part of the Yeosu Art Festival in Korea this August and September. The show focuses on human beings' disconnect from nature, and is curated by Raul Zamudio, former curatorial director of White Box in NYC and curator of over 50 international exhibitions.

You can see more information on the show here or by emailing yeosufestival@gmail.com

I'm going to be part of a three person show with my friend Maurene Cooper and fellow artist Alisha Wessler at Claremorris Gallery in Ireland --- just outside of Dublin. The show was curated by the excellent Emma Balacz, who has written an essay for the catalog, excerpted below:

These artists apply a rigor to their process that produces pieces that are seductive in their beauty, exhilarating in their strong technical foundation, and compel us to further, deeper consideration of the subject or idea proposed. The title ‘Protagonist’ refers
to each artist’s choice to place herself in the centre of her work. As heroines in their own projects, vehicles to explore their chosen territories, the artists call to us and invite us into their worlds.

Jenny Kendler explores the relation of the human and natural kingdoms. Peaceful Kingdom is a powerful statement of utopia. Her drawings explore the connections between nature and humans and ask us, through devices of seduction and confrontation, to consider the responsibilities of humans towards nature and our inextricable links to the natural world.

These young artists are at an exciting moment in their careers. Each artist is rapidly advancing, developing a strong following in her community. They are creating prolifically, showing actively, and their works are quickly entering private collections throughout the US. This is the first time their works have been presented outside of the US. It is a privilege and an honor to introduce the artists and their unique visions to an Irish audience.

If you're going to be nearby Dublin, Protagonist runs from May 24th to June 14th 2008.

Claremorris Gallery
Mount Street, Claremorris
Co. Mayo, Ireland
claremorrisgallery.com.
info@claremorrisgallery.com.
phone: +353 94 93 72886

Gallery hours are Tues-Sat 11am - 6pm.

You can check out the story and my section here.

You can read a great review of Henbane here: NewCity Review by Kelly McClure. The show was also featured in the Chicago Reader and reviewed as 5 stars by Time Out Chicago.

Henbane is a group show I am in with 4 good friends. The full title is Henbane : Dialectics of the Feminine Sublime and it's at the Medicine Park Gallery, a new artspace here in Chicago. The other artists are Meg Leary, Molly Schafer, Amber Hawk Swanson and Stacia Yeapanis.

Henbane runs from March 21st to April 21st 2008 with an Opening Reception March 21, 7pm to 11pm and a video screening at 8pm. (The opening was much much fun! We had a huge turnout despite the freak snowstorm.)

Below is an excerpt from a short essay Molly & I wrote for the show:

Unlike the traditional sublime, the feminine sublime does not domesticate the object that might be a source of threat. Instead, it accepts the relationship of both pleasure and pain, or life and death, and the potential dispersal of the self. – Joanna Zylinska

Henbane opens with the full Crow Moon on March 21st and will include a gallery exhibition and video screening. The cast of characters featured in Henbane includes Hillary Clinton, Female Centaurs, Xena Warrior Princess, Feral Girls and a Real Doll special ordered in the artist’s image. The interdisciplinary exhibition includes photographs, drawings, videos, appropriation-works and wee sculptures that often refuse to make hierarchies or distinctions between classes of knowledge, medias or genres.

The artists of Henbane are also part of a critique group that supports and assists the members in the creation of their own individual (and sometimes collaborative) projects, while maintaining a critical core centered on feminism, identity, fantasy, political activism, environmentalism, and culture studies. Henbane seeks to draw on this gestalt, focusing the central energy of the group towards the innate conflicts and resolutions located within and between gender and sex.

Like these dialectics, the feminine sublime is inherently hybrid, dispelling gender-specific ideas associated with the traditional sublime. The theory of the feminine sublime proposes a way to view the external world that welcomes the dissolution of fixed identity as a means to extend our respect and understanding outwards --- from a self-core unafraid to fluidify it’s boundaries.

Medicine Park
2659 W. Chicago Ave.
Chicago, IL 60622
medparkchicago.com.
myspace.com/medparkchicago.
medicineparkchicago@gmail.com.
773.255.5582

Gallery hours are Sundays 12pm-6pm and by appointment.

I am going to be part of a group show called Grounded at the Ellen Curlee Gallery in St. Louis. The show will also feature work from the extremely talented Maslen + Mehra, John Pfahl, and Brian Ulrich. Grounded opens on March 15th. Please contact the gallery for more information.

You can read an essay that I wrote on the work on Maslen + Mehra on my blog Wunderkammer, here: environmentalartblog.com

Below is an excerpt from the press release:

Grounded: Photography and Our Contemporary Environment is an exhibition bringing together international photography and video art focusing on the complex and dynamic interrelationship between humans and the earth while addressing the environmental troubles currently confronting us.

The theme of the exhibition was developed in partnership with the St. Louis Earth Day organization, as a result of their expressed interest in adding a collaborative and artistic component directly involving the community. The photographers represented in Grounded are among a growing movement of global artists who are critically addressing environmental issues such as climate change, extinction and conservation.

These artists believe that art can play a critical role in providing creative insight into these challenges. Grounded proposes art as a way of creating a better understanding of our relationship with our environment as well as a way to explore the renewed role of contemporary art as a leading force in the global debate about the future of our planet.

Ellen Curlee Gallery
1308A Washington Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63103
ellencurleegallery.com.
dana@ellencurleegallery.com.

I have a solo show entitled Wunderkammer up this winter at Kasia Kay Art Projects. The show runs from November 30th to December 29th, 2007.

The opening was on Friday the 30th and went really well, with big crowds all night and many nice comments on the work.

Below is an excerpt from the press release:

In Wunderkammer, Kendler re-imagines the Naturalist of the past through the lens of modern ecology and environmentalism. If the Naturalist of the 18th and 19th centuries sought to lay personal claim to the natural world and contain it in a specimen cabinet or book of prints, Kendler presents her room of intimate drawings and sculpture as a definitive counterpoint to the view of nature as something to be possessed. Her delicate work suggests instead that it is we who are possessed by nature.

Also, check out this Wikipedia article for some more info on the fascinating topic of wunderkammern or "cabinets of curiosities".

Kasia Kay Art Projects
1044 W. Fulton Market St
Chicago, IL 60607
kasiakayartprojects.com.
info@kasiakayartprojects.com.

I have three of my sculptural terrariums in this show curated by Rob Bondgren.

unNatural presents the work of four artists who construct or depict artificial environments that question our estrangement from nature, our ability and willingness to re-engage with it, and other notions of authenticity, romanticism, longing, and desire. My talented friend Maureen Cooper is also one of the artists in the show.

unNatural will be up from from November 16th to December 4th, 2007. The gallery hosts an opening on November 16th from 6-10pm.

estudiotres
5205 North Clark St
Chicago, Illinois 60640
estudiotres.com/gallery/.
gallery@estudiotres.com.

Drowning World, a solo show of new works by Jenny Kendler, runs from May 11th to June 9th.

This show received some nice press. "As I became invisible..." was printed in the Chicago Reader's featured galleries section. The show was also reviewed by Usama Alshaibi from Vocalo.org, a radio station and webcast that is an experimental offshoot of Chicago's NPR station. Flavorpill featured the show in their most recent issue 141, "Animalistic Flavor." How appropriate...

Below is an excerpt from the press release:

Jenny Kendler's intricately drawn works on paper re-enchant taxonomy, the method by which living things are categorized and separated, stepping across the symbolic divide between homo sapiens and the rest of the natural world. Rendered in meticulous pencil and iridescent ink, Kendler's delicate human forms stream tiny fish and blood-soaked newborn birds. Tidepools rupture the skin and carnivorous pitcher plants erupt in ecstatic bursts. This intimate bodily connection to the natural world is a glimpse into the forgotten kingdom of our animal selves.

Please email me for a copy of the full press release or additional details.

NOVA Gallery
840 W. Washington Blvd.
Chicago, IL 60607

I have a pair of photo works in this group show in St. Louis, MO.

My brother is attending medical school at Wash. U St. Louis, so this is the perfect excuse for me to visit. I'll be at the opening if anyone is in town, and would like to come by.

Free Rein/Full Play - New Chicago Photographers
Opening: Friday Feb, 16th 2007
February 16 - March 31, 2007

Ellen Curlee Gallery
1308A Washington Avenue
St. Louis, MO 63103

I will be showing work at the Contemporary Artists Center in North Adams, Massachusetts (nearby the MASS MOCA) as part of the exhibit "Back to Nature" curated by Hezzie Phillips. The show opens May 28th, 2006.

The Contemporary Artists Center
189 Beaver St.
North Adams MA 01247
thecac.org
info@thecac.org

Golden Girls: Fantasies, Utopias, and Alter-Egos opens at Gallery 2 on May 5th 2006, and runs through May 19th. The Opening Reception is free to the public and is from 5pm-8pm on the 5th. Email me for more information and/or a press pack and catalog.

Gallery 2
847 W. Jackson Blvd.
Chicago, IL 60607