Artist Profile Series: Jenny Hyde
Jenny Hyde (Spokane) is a visual artist working in sound, video, digital print, and multimedia installation. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at Saranac Art Projects, Gallery One, Object Space, and more, as well as at the New York Electronic Arts Festival and XTC Itinerant Experimental Performance Project. She first became interested in digital art after moving to New York, where Michal Rovner’s 2002 exhibition at the Whitney sparked her imagination. “I remember a desperate hunger after that exhibition,” she recalls, “I wanted to make work like it.”
In 2010, Jenny received a GAP to assist with the creation of G-Train, a multimedia installation inspired by one of New York’s most diverse train routes that premiered at the Gallery of Fine Art at Spokane Falls Community College in 2012. In addition to helping her travel to New York, film the project, and record audio, Jenny says the GAP allowed her to “put way more into the project than I otherwise would have. […] It allowed me to realize I can pull off ambitious projects.”
Jenny also received a Fellowship in 2017, which so far has allowed her to produce and frame a series of digital prints for All American, an installation exploring the place of guns in American culture that opened at Spokane’s Saranac Art Projects in September 2017. Jenny has also set some of the funding aside so that she can purchase new equipment and take time off from teaching to focus on new projects this summer.
Asked how receiving the Fellowship impacted her career as an artist, Jenny says, “I’ve yet to really experience how the fellowship will impact my career. Certainly, more exposure of my work has been beneficial already, but I am excited to see what happens in the next couple months with a couple new projects simmering in the back of my head.”
Jenny’s advice for artists considering applying for a Fellowship or GAP is to “just do it! Take a workshop or two to get comfortable and then just do it. […] If you don’t get it, then apply again! Keep applying and don’t take it personally if you don’t get selected. Consult with a professional artist friend who gives honest and constructive feedback. Have them look over your application materials. Don’t feel like you’re doing this alone.”
“My other advice is to keep making work, document the work and get the work out there,” she adds. “It will always benefit your application if there is someone on the committee who has experienced the work first hand. So join an artist co-op, create your own artist group – you can make opportunities happen.”
To learn more about Jenny and her current projects, check out her website.
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Megan Gallagher is a writer from Redmond, Washington. She currently serves as Artist Trust’s Communications Intern.
