October 19, 2008

Jen Blazina, Assistant Professor in the Art & Art History Department, is a mixed media artist who focuses on screen printing and large-scale installations. Beyond an extensive schedule of solo and group exhibitions, Jen conducts workshops & master classes, and she lectures in the States and abroad. The Cranbook Art Museum in Bloomfield, Michigan, the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California, and The Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio are three of eight institutions that house permanent collections of Jen's work.

Since 1997, Jen has been featured in 27 solo exhibitions and 64 group exhibitions. Her large scale exhibit, Recollection, was shown in Philadelphia, Miami and Chicago. She has also exhibited in solo exhibitions in Belgium, Germany, New York, New Mexico and Florida. Jen's recent group and two-person exhibits include Multiplicity, an exhibit at the American University Museum in Washington, D.C., Time Capsules at Gallery Imperato in Baltimore and Historia, Jen Blazina and Michael Markwick in Dordrecht, Netherlands.

Jen is represented by galleries in Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Palm Springs. "I will continue to exhibit, lecture and conduct workshops," Jen said. "It is important for me to experiment with my work technically, educate myself further in a variety of media and challenge myself conceptually to broaden the themes and content in my work."

In the summer of 2008, Jen was a resident artist at the Frans Masereel Centrium in Belgium for a four week printmaking workshop. She was awarded residencies at Scuola di Grafica in Venice, Italy and the Kala Institute of Art. In 2009, she will be the resident artist at the Toos Neger Studio in the Netherlands. The National Endowment for the Arts recently awarded Jen an artist residency grant at the Woman's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York. She has also received the Maryland State Art Council Individual Artist Grant, and locally, the Windows of Opportunity Grant from the Leeway Foundation, and the Independence Foundation Artist Fellowship Grant.

Jen describes working with multiple pieces of art in large-scale exhibits as a "conglomeration of one experience," where she can create a space and organize her pieces into a specific vision.