ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is site-specific, materially responsive, and generates collectivity. I think of a city as an organism whose life force is constructed by networks. To sustain these networks, communities generate infrastructures through repeated daily activities and service-focused utilities. Awareness of one’s impact on natural resources -or even their proximity- can alter daily habits and their impact upon local resources, therby improving the health of a city.
My strategy is to generate tangible forms that expose environmental factors not immediately perceptible at a site. I begin by listening to those to be served – seeking out especially the voices of those who are often overlooked. I then research underlying geological, ecological, and historical conditions at a site. I trace air currents, solar paths, weather patterns, and the watershed. I observe flora, fauna, the flow of people, data, and resources at the site. Discovering needs, I respond by stacking functions to solve as many concerns as possible – including our need for beauty. The result is civically-embedded generative machines, aka “public art works”. I have also founded public platforms that invite everyone into the process of hands-on experimentation and debate in the built environment.
BIO
Jenna Didier is a sculptor whose work with water and public space promotes stewardship of ecologies within cities and on public lands. Via community collaborations, she promotes inclusivity, empowering voices and visions that are not commonly foregrounded in public space.
In 2002, Didier founded the nonprofit organization Materials & Applications (M&A) based in Los Angeles. The twenty projects that Didier curated for M&A have been published widely. M&A has received awards from the Andy Warhol Foundation, Graham Foundation, The Getty Museum, the AIA, and others. In 2012, the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach, presented a M&A retrospective funded by the NEA spanning the previous decade. An M&A survey took place at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design in 2018. M&A currently programs the courtyard space at the Craft Contemporary on Museum Row in Los Angeles with full scale architectural inquiries and workshops.
Her artwork has been presented widely including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Rochester Art Center, the Studio for Urban Projects in San Francisco, MIT, Taliesin West, the Dwell on Design conference in Los Angeles, AIA Mobius LA Conference, TED-LA, MIT Media Lab, AIA-LA, Corcoran Design School, the Cal State Long Beach Design Department, CalArts and the Americans for the Arts Annual Conference. Her work has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Durfee Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency. She has received the Nice Modernist Award from Dwell Magazine, the Neutra Spirit Award from the Neutra Foundation, the Americans’ for the Arts Public Art of the Year Award, and the first Commendation Scroll ever awarded to a public artist by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Residencies include the Blunk Foundation in Inverness, CA and Instant Herlev Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her permanent public art works inhabit cities along the California coast including Hollywood, Downtown Los Angeles, San Francisco, Carlsbad, and Wilmington and also in her hometown of Rochester, Minnesota. She lives in Los Angeles.
e: yes[at]jennadidier.com
i: @jennaDDA
studio: 4644 Huntington Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90032
image by Leslie Williamson