Bio
Jen is a glass artist, writer, curator, mother, and veteran. Living and traveling abroad awakened her curiosity about how different cultural taboos exert influence on the lives and bodies of women. Her creative practice uses the allure of glass in a lush palette of pinks to explore and resist sociocultural pressures upon women and mothers in particular. Jen holds an MA in Critical Craft Studies from Warren Wilson College and a BFA in Craft with a Minor in Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University. She was awarded the 2022 Corning Museum of Glass Rakow Grant for her graduate studies on the connections of care among women in the American Studio Glass Movement, and was a 2018 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Undergraduate Fellow.
Jennifer is the Conference Manager for the Glass Art Society, and serves on the Board of the 757 Creative Reuse Center and the Lil Truck of Tools mobile maker education nonprofit. Along with Poetry Jackson, she co-founded the 757 Street Art Battle.
Jennifer formerly made work under the name Jennifer Detlefsen, but following a divorce chose to take her grandmother’s surname to honor her matrilineal heritage.
Jen is the proud mother of three fierce daughters and one hyperactive terrier mix, and a loving grandmother to two rats and a most elegant black cat. She lives with her dreamboat of a creative and life partner, Ben Wright aka Snuffywrong.
Artist Statement
I make art about the cultural expectations that govern the lives and bodies of women. The duality of hot glass inspires me with its sensuality, unruliness, and inclination to make one hell of a scene. Using molten fire and a robust pallet of pink kitschy materials, I confront viewers with the uncomfortable reality that violence against women’s bodies is a universal experience. Immersive installations, performances and video act as a safely saccharine lens through which to examine the taboos around discussing matrescence, domestic violence and self-determination. I disrupt the patriarchal equivalence of the feminine with the frivolous by making provocatively intense work that drips with both challenge and the color pink. The color of blushing lovers, budding cherries, the perfect cupid’s bow of a baby’s mouth, new life and sunsets and sex, pink is present in the moments of sweetness and silliness that make life worth living.
Contact
EMAIL
jenniferalexishand@gmail.com
INSTAGRAM
@xojenniferalexis
