Get a hold of me at jkwornson{at}gmail.com
Day Jobs:
Adjunct faculty, Dunwoody College of Technology and Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Performance Collaborations:
It’s Physical: Part 2, Southern Theater, Jennifer Glaws, Jagged Moves and the artists, Minneapolis, MN 2024 (Set Design)
Mariology, Mixed Blood Theater, Nancy Keystone and Critical Mass Performance Group, Minneapolis, MN 2023 (Lobby installation co-design with Efren Delgado Jr., drawings on set)
Dearest Liberator: Disaster! Disaster! Disaster!, Rosy Simas Danse, Taja Will Ensemble, Minneapolis MN 2023 (Set Design)
It’s Physical: Part 1, Red Eye Theater, Jennifer Glaws, Jagged Moves and the artists, Minneapolis, MN 2023 (Set Design)
The River is Broken, University of Minnesota Barker Center, Taja Will Ensemble, Minneapolis, MN 2022 (Set Design)
Contained, Alive, Candy Box Festival, with Pedro Pablo and the artists, Minneapolis, MN 2020 (Set Design)
Touch Code, Southern Theater, with Jenn Glaws and the artists, Minneapolis, MN 2020 (Set design)
Birds of the Future, Fresh Oysters Performance Research, with Charles Campbell and the artists, Minneapolis, MN 2019 (Set design, Installation, collaborator)
Holy Doña, Cowls Center for the Arts, with Pedro Lander and Red Eye Productions, Minneapolis, MN 2019 (Set design)
Parking Ramp Project, Health Partners parking ramp, with Aniccha Arts, Bloomington, MN 2018 (Associate Lighting Designer)
ICON Sam, Cowls Center for the Arts, with Sally Rousse and the artists, Minneapolis, MN 2018
Group Exhibitions:
Transparency, Image Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2017
This Machine: Not My President's Day, locations variable, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN 2017
Mining Light: Not My President's Day, Ohio Tavern, Madison, WI 2017
ABRVTN, Figure One Gallery, Champaign, IL 2016
UIUC MFA Exhibition, Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL 2016
40@100, Hunt Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2015
TimeShare, Figure One Gallery, Champaign, IL 2015
New Terrains Symposium Exhibition, Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL 2015
Make, Perform, Show + a Little Concert, CoLab, Urbana, IL 2014
Le Premier Etage, Hunt Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2014
Where the Tracks End, Bone Yard Arts Festival, Champaign, IL 2014
Parsing Desire, Ugly Stepsister Gallery, Chicago, IL 2013
Upside Down, Left to Right, Figure One Gallery, Champaign, IL 2013
Download/Destroy, Fortress to Solitude, Brooklyn, NY 2010
Agent Form, FAB Gallery, Richmond, VA 2009
When We Build, Let Us Think We Build Forever, Luminary Center for the Arts, St. Louis, MO 2009
Classic Covers, Bluebird Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2008
Statistical Records of Performance, Metropolitan Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2008
Nouns, Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts, St. Louis, MO 2007
Solo/Two-Person Exhibitions:
Other Rooms, Near To Me, Maltese Embassy + Satellite 66 with Anja Udfelt, San Francisco, CA 2011
Saudade, PSTL Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2009
Sleep with Stairs No. 1, Snowflake Gallery Drive-By, St. Louis, MO 2009
Related Activities:
Artist in Residence, The Future, Minneapolis, MN 2017
Designer, Chiri Knits Des Moines, IA/Arequipa, Peru 2011-2020
Dancer, collaborator, Social Animal: Please Tame Me, Lailye Weidman Champaign, IL 2015
Artist in Residence, Year of Living Collaboratively, University Park, MD July 2012
Education:
MFA University of Illinois Urbana Champaign 2016
BFA Webster University 2008
Awards:
Conrad Fenwick Grant, UIUC 2016
School of Art and Design MFA Creative Research Award, UIUC 2014-2015
School of Art and Design Event Travel Award, UIUC 2014
Graduate College Block Grant Fellowship, UIUC 2013-2014
Press:
Donny Gettinger, Interview, Altered Esthetics, Minneapolis, MN 2019
Shelly Change, Walking Talking and Looking in Bathtubs, Smile Politely, Champaign, IL 2016
Sam Logan, Figure One Asks and Answers, Smile Politely Champaign, IL 2015
Jessica Baran, St. Louis Art Capsules, Riverfront Times St. Louis, MO 2009
Jessica Baran, St. Louis Art Capsules, Riverfront Times St. Louis, MO 2008
Sometimes I make art to better understand and communicate the in-between spaces of my life and the lives with which it is entwined. Sometimes I make art in order to play make-believe. Sometimes I make art because I know how and sometimes because I don’t.
I always make art as a way of building new systems to live within.
Drawing on various forms of fiction and rooted in feminist and performance theories, I consider the everyday waste of our lives together with familiar imagery to reimagine a deeply oppressive systemic world. In painting, collage, sculpture, installation, or writing, I am asking the viewer to reimagine the utility, value, and possibility of our affective, socio-political, and experiential surroundings. When building sets that combine industrial detritus with nostalgia, I am asking myself to reframe conversations that focus on the failings of individual psyche and instead hold accountable the structural failings of a society that dehumanizes, isolates, and paralyzes people and then blames them for the great failures of our world. My work asks for criticality and sentimentality in enormous and equal measure—as a form of essential resistance to a culture that works to subjugate, delegitimize, and deny these forms of deep collective power. After so many years of being told by the dominant paradigm, with a sinister and saccharine edge, that my heartbreak will make me stronger, I am inclined to join my strength along with the rest of the heartbroken to burn down the paradigm.