Jody Servon (right) shown collecting songs for her participatory playlist project Our Top 100 at the National Folk Festival. Photo by Todd Turner.
Jody Servon
ABOUT
My projects rely on the participation of others. Behind each image, object and handwritten notation is the voice of a person sharing something personal about themselves. Although inspired by my experiences, my works are collections of personal histories shared by others. In my socially engaged projects, I provide prompts for people to respond to in a variety of ways. Their responses range from recalling a memory attached to a song to sharing a photograph and text about an object that they have saved from a deceased loved one.
Because I am committed to providing moments for reflection during people’s daily routines, these works often occur in public spaces and online. I want my work to engage with a larger public than that which generally visits museums and galleries and frequently create work on city streets and in community spaces. In both physical places and through social media, I provide opportunities for people to consider their memories, experiences and surroundings (and hopefully enhance their human experience). I work across disciplines to facilitate collaborations and projects that impact those who experience them.
BIO
Jody Servon creates collaborative and socially engaged projects that encourage public interaction and personal exploration. Her projects have been included exhibitions, screenings, and as public projects in the U.S., Canada, and China. Servon’s writing and/or art has been featured in New American Paintings, Emergency Index, Kakalak, andArtful Dodge. Her collaborative work with Lorene Delany-Ullman has been published in AGNI, Tupelo Quarterly, Palaver, Lunch Ticket and was shortlisted for theTarpaulin Sky book prize.Reviews and articles on her projects have been in The New York Times,The Miami Herald, Arizona Daily Star, Los Angeles Times andTime magazine’s Money.com. She has participated in numerous artist residencies including Vermont Studio Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Artspace, and Virginia Center for Creative Arts.
Servon received a MFA in New Genre from The University of Arizona and a BFA in Visual Art from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. She has served on numerous boards including: Elsewhere Museum, North Carolina Museums Council and the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design. She also curates exhibitions focused on contemporary art, and was a curatorial coordinator at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art in Florida. Currently she is the Sharpe Chair of Fine and Applied Art and Professor of Art at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. Her work can be viewed at jodyservon.com.