Jennifer Reifsneider

Identity arises in language, memory and experience, and falls in the gaps between.

My artwork combines forms and systems of identification -- measurement, collection, embodiment -- with labor-intensive processes and associative meanings to filter, flatten, expand, or unravel information.

When structures for meaning fail in spite of (or because of) efforts to maintain them, there is space to observe the humorous contradictions of desire and persistence.

Bio:

Jennifer Reifsneider’s mixed media sculptures and installations have been exhibited in seven solo exhibitions in Montana and over 30 group exhibitions across the United States, in venues including the Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT; Saranac Art Projects, Spokane, WA; Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; Basilico Fine Arts, New York, NY; and the Cartin Gallery, Hartford, CT.

Reifsneider’s sculpture has been acquired by the Yellowstone Art Museum and a recording of her sound work was collected by the Museum of Modern Art / Franklin Furnace Artist Book Archive in New York. Numerous private collectors and artists, including Mickey Cartin and Tony Fitzpatrick, also have acquired her work.

Reifsneider has received several commissions, grants and awards, including a percent-for-art public commission from homeWORD, Inc, Missoula, MT, and a publication commission from The University of Virginia for a unique work distributed in its journal, iris. Reifsneider was granted an artist residency at the Ucross Foundation, Clearmont, WY, and a residency award from California State University, Long Beach, and most recently was the first artist-in-residence at Coastline Community College Art Gallery in Huntington Beach, CA.

Born in 1973 in Plainfield, New Jersey, Reifsneider was raised on a working farm in rural southeastern Pennsylvania, and migrated west in 1997. She received her MFA from California State University, Long Beach in 2011 and BFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1995. She is an active member of the creative community; in addition to 13 years of museum work at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and the Missoula Art Museum, she has volunteered with public programming at non-profit art spaces, film festivals, theaters, and public radio.