Born in Northeast Ohio and now based in Los Angeles, Jennifer Vanderpool produces work spanning design, sculpture, media, performance, and installation, weaving these forms together with historic popular culture. Her earlier pieces explored the boundary between the natural and the artificial. Writing on Wanton, 2011, at Galería Sextante, Bogotá, art historian Dr. Kevin Concannon observed: “With Jennifer Vanderpool’s sculptural installations it can certainly seem that ‘nothing succeeds like excess.’ While her ultra-baroque sensibility offers viewers a surfeit of visual and emotional pleasures, nothing is squandered.” In her recent work, Vanderpool reframes abstracted fragments of historic material culture into allegorical imagery.
Her residencies include Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá; HOTHOUSE 2015, a UCLA/Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance residency; Pitzer College, Claremont; and the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena. As a visiting artist she has spoken at OVERGADEN: Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; University of Lincoln, England, UK; Universiteit van Amsterdam and Artez Institute for the Arts, Netherlands; Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano and Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center; California College of the Arts, Oakland; Indiana University at Bloomington; Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg; and other U.S. universities.
Vanderpool’s curatorial work probes socially constructed ideas about the environment and belief systems, along with gender, ageism, and economics. She has curated shows at the Crossroads School in Santa Monica, Eyedrum in Atlanta, and the now-closed Atlanta artist collaborative Bluemilk. Her curatorial project Imaginary Selves opened at the University of La Verne in February 2016, featuring California-based artists Jane Callister, Lisa Jevbratt, Việt Lê, and James Van Arsdale, Canadian artist Brian McArthur, and Colombian artist Catalina Jaramillo Quijano; the exhibition examined the socio-cultural formation of self.
Vanderpool earned an Independent, Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in the Humanities and an MFA from the Regents of the University of California, where she was a UC Regents Fellow. She was an Academic Fellow at Emory University, where she completed an MA in Art History. She also holds an MA in Community Arts Activism from The Ohio State University and a BA in History from Wittenberg University.
