July 18, 2022

Jennie Thwing is a Canadian-born artist, animator, and educator.  She recently (2021) Moved from NYC to Alfred, NY where she teaches animation at Alfred State College. She received her BFA from Tyler School of Art and her MFA from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She has had solo exhibitions at Grizzly Grizzly, Local Project, Chashama Space to Present, the Arlington Arts Center, the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, The Mainline Art Center, Soho 20 Gallery, School 33, Fleisher Art Memorial Dene M. Locheim Gallery, Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Studio 34 and 20.20. She has curated numerous multidisciplinary exhibitions and attended residencies in the US, Norway, New Zealand, and Canada.  She has received numerous awards including the 2014 Meyer Family Award for Contemporary Art; an Environmental Art Project Grant at the Schuylkill Center; a 2013 – 15’ Center for Emerging Artists Fellowship; a 2014 SPARC Artist in Residence grant; and a 2014 & 2019 Queens Arts Fund Grant. Thwing has also served as a panelist for various arts organizations including The New York State Council for the Arts, The Queens Council for the Arts, IPark Artist Residency, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Jennie’s project, “Our Country”, is an abstract interactive animation/installation that shows how colonization, industrial growth, consumer culture and population growth have caused environmental changes in the United States. The installation displays audio and animated projections on a 3D model of the United States that is activated by audience interaction. The animations and sound include both formative and mundane events in US history (Ex; flocks of migrating birds. a baby being born, the sounds of early industry [the pacific railroad, coal mining, factory sounds etc.] a newspaper recitations of natural disasters and world events, audio clips from popular tv shows, parades, traffic patterns, audio clips from a birthday party, a political speech, news reports of the first shots in a war.) The animations is activated by pointing a laser pointer/flash light at certain key locations. When the installation is not activated it runs in a chronological timeline depicting sounds, music and imagery that abstractly represents the industrialization, history, natural landscape and cultural events of the United States. (Ex: The arrival of Native Americans 15,000 BC, European Colonization, Migration of early settlers, the rise and fall of slavery, the formation of government, the various wars, the spread of industrialization, population growth, environmental changes, social unrest [civil rights/women’s suffrage] and other key developments.)

Our Country, work sample I.

Our Country, work sample II.

3D Model of the United Sates.