Jennifer Levonian: Speed Reader
August 13 - December 2, 2025
Main Building, N303
 

On view in Dodd gallery director Rachel Waldrop’s office (Dodd, N303) during the Fall 2025 semester is Jennifer Levonian’s (American, b. 1977) cutout animation titled Speed Reader. The animation is 4 minutes and 25 seconds long and runs on a loop in Waldrop’s office monitor, which is viewable through the windows into the hallway as well as inside her office. Speed Reader follows a set of twins as their lives weave in and out of one another, portraying what it is to see and be seen or not seen by loved ones through the vicissitudes of life.

For nearly fifteen years, Levonian has created complex critiques of American culture and class using her unique style of stop-motion animation, a medium that aligns her practice with traditions of storytelling and myth-making. Like Levonian’s other animations, Speed Reader was created from thousands of hand-drawn backgrounds and puppets, and blends documentary and fictional elements to create a narrative in which the absurd, surreal, heartbreaking, and hilarious are perpetually in play. 

Waldrop plans to display new video work in her office every semester so that there are more opportunities to present artists in conversation at the Dodd. Stop by, sit down, or watch the video as you walk the building!

About the Artist

Jennifer Levonian (American, b. 1977; lives and works in Vigo, Spain) creates cut-paper animations that explore the ambivalence of everyday life by focusing on things which go unnoticed and transforming them into bizarre and uncanny events. Her work has been screened and exhibited nationally, including at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibits; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Sarah Lawrence College, New York; Exit Art, New York; and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Colombus, OH; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Sante Fe Art Institute, New Mexico. Levonian has been a resident at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She holds a BA from The College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. In 2009, she was awarded the Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

For more information, contact Rachel Waldrop, Director and Curator, Dodd Galleries and Atheneum: rachel.waldrop@uga.edu. The Dodd Galleries are open M-Fri in the main Lamar Dodd School of Art building, from 9am-4:30pm. The Lamar Dodd School of Art is closed on weekends, University holidays, and home game days.

Gallery
Dodd Galleries
Exhibition Duration
August 13, 2025 - December 02, 2025