Visiting Artist: Jennifer Vanderpool
Visiting Artist: Jennifer Vanderpool
Jennifer Vanderpool is an American artist and expert on socially engaged art. She is based in Los Angeles and teaches at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Jen will be staying with us until the end of May 2022, funded by a Fulbright Scholarship to work with Dr Vid Simoniti on her exciting project “Untold Stories”.
“Untold Stories” she explains, “began as I weaved my experiences growing up in deindustrialized Northeast Ohio, with an investigation of its history and the legacy of disinvestment. This research resulted in community-specific and site-responsive exhibitions of Akron and Youngstown, funded by an ArtStart Grant from the Ohio Arts Council. Crafting a social history of each city, the shows unveiled deindustrialization's human cost, querying neighborhood decay and gentrification, segregation and integrated communities, and unemployment and economic redevelopment. These exhibitions promoted civil contestation addressing social conflicts and traumas. As a US-UK Fulbright Artist Fellow at the University of Liverpool, I am currently exploring relationships between these Ohio cities and those in the Industrial North of England through compositions and interviews with workers, activists, and scholars.”
You can read more about her project here.