BIO

Jennifer Torres was born in Queens, NY and with her family moved to Teaneck, New Jersey where she lived for many years. She did her first four years of studio training as a teenager at the Art Students League in New York City and then her undergraduate work at the Cooper Union, also in NYC. While at Cooper, she took a year off to travel solo in India and Nepal for a year. This trip was a turning point in her life and a great influence in her later work. After graduating from Cooper she trained as a fine cabinetmaker in New England, and later worked at a lumber mill in Oregon before finally going to graduate school at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA, receiving an MFA in sculpture.

Ms. Torres has a deep love for all types of watercraft, she has spent much time studying their various forms and learned how to build stitch and glue and skin-on-frame vessels about five years ago. Around that time she also learned about traditional kayaking and kayak building through Qajaq USA an organization devoted to traditional kayaking, history and culture. This method of building, skin-on-frame, has changed her life and her art in a major way and is evident in nearly all of her current work.

Ms. Torres has shown actively since beginning graduate school; from Florida to Texas and many of the South Eastern US states and throughout the Midwest. She recently was awarded a Mississippi Arts Commission Visual Arts Fellowship Grant and is in two group shows in Chicago as well as the Tallahassee International at the Museum of Fine Arts in Tallahassee, Florida.

Ms. Torres currently is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she teaches and runs the sculpture program. At USM she recently was awarded a major summer teaching research grant.