Banner image: Jen de los Reyes and Oscar Rene Cornejo, Forest Planning (2024). Courtesy of the artists.

The Lamar Dodd School of Art welcomes artist, educator, writer, and community arts organizer Jen de los Reyes for a Visiting Artist Lecture. De los Reyes, an associate professor of art at Cornell University, will speak about her ongoing project LAND — awarded a 2025 Creative Capital Project Grant — and related themes of regenerative forestry, permaculture, collective stewardship, and site-responsive agriculture.

LAND arial view, fall 2024. YouTube video courtesy of the artist.

About the artist

Jen de los Reyes is an artist, educator, writer, and community arts organizer. With roots in the Riot Grrrl and DIY music scene, her practice incorporates pedagogical, ecological, and organizational methodologies. She founded and directed Open Engagement, an international conference on socially engaged art that was active from 2007–2019. She currently serves as an associate professor of art at Cornell University. De los Reyes speaks widely and has presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Textile Museum of Canada, Minneapolis College of Art and Design and Project Row Houses amongst many others. She is the author of several books, most recently Defiantly Optimistic: Turning Up in a World on Fire.

Her project LAND was awarded a 2025 Creative Capital Project Grant. LAND "combines histories of artists' engagement with land-based practices and techniques with environmental regeneration and conservation to cultivate sustainable futures." Working on a 4.2-acre site northwest of Cornell's Ithaca campus, the project encompasses outdoor art and ecology studios, community-driven agriculture, artist interventions, and educational programming. Planned work will demonstrate regenerative forestry, permaculture, collective stewardship, and site-responsive agriculture.

Visiting Artists and Scholars Series

At the Dodd, teaching and research are supplemented by the Visiting Artists and Scholars Program, which brings a wide range of extraordinary practitioners to campus. While in Athens, they give lectures, lead workshops, and participate in community activities. Always free and open to the public, these Tuesday evening lectures are an integral part of the culture at the School of Art and are an essential facet of education in the fields of art, design, art history, and art education. Lectures by visiting artists and scholars are supplemented by faculty research lectures from both within the Dodd and faculty across UGA whose interdisciplinary research is arts related. Thanks to generous support from donors, the School of Art offers additional named lectures like the Jack Davis Lecture in Illustration and Design, attracting experts in the field to campus for student enrichment and free public programs.

For support opportunities, contact Grace Mercer, Development Associate at grace.mercer@uga.edu