The Department of Visual and Performing Arts at PennWest is pleased to welcome artist Jenny Kendler for an artist talk focusing on her environmentally engaged practice. The talk will be held in the Dr. William P. Alexander Music Center on the PennWest Edinboro campus at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 26.
Kendler’s visit is made possible through a 28-year partnership between the Erie Art Museum and PennWest Edinboro’s Visiting Artist and Speaker Endowment (VASE) committee. Each year, the university VASE committee works with the museum to engage an art world professional to jury the museum’s annual Spring Show, meet with students, and deliver a public talk at the university.
The annual lecture is a highlight of the semester for art students, with professors emphasizing the value of the program.
“We are incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to engage with art-world professionals of this caliber,” says Karen Ernst, professor of woodworking at PennWest and chair of the VASE committee. “The longevity of the VASE program underscores the importance of providing experiences for students to interact with national-level critics, art historians, art educators and artists.”
As juror for the 103rd Annual Erie Art Museum Spring Show, Kendler selected 74 artworks from 533 submissions. The Spring Show, which features artists living, working or studying within 250 miles of Erie, is a celebration of the breadth of creative talent across our region. The opening reception for the Spring Show will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 2.
Jenny Kendler is an interdisciplinary artist, activist and naturalist based in Chicago. Over the past two decades, her projects on climate change and biodiversity loss have been shown at London's Hayward Gallery, New York's Governors Island, Storm King, the Smithsonian NMNH, MCA Chicago, and public locations from urban riverwalks to remote deserts and tropical forests.
Kendler is the current artistic fellow with the Center for Humans and Nature, and from 2014 to 2024 was the first artist-in-residence with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRCD). She is a founding member of Artists for Chicago and Artists Commit, an artist-led initiative to cultivate climate-consciousness in the artworld and serves on the Board of Directors for the global climate organization 350.rg, the artist residency ACRE, and ArtsFIRST Chicago, the city’s first community arts foundation.
In 2023, Kendler was a 3Arts Awardee, and with Gallery 400, she was awarded a major Mellon Foundation Humanities Without Walls grant for Garden for a Changing Climate. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2006) and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.