Jones’ work operates in the space where art history and black history intersect, concentrating on the abstract, minimal and formalist languages of modernist art forms merged with the conceptual ideologies and techniques of avant-garde jazz.  It is from within this radical legacy of experimentation, wit and riff that Jones’ work in audio, sculpture and drawing manifests itself.  Seen as both a comment on and a continuum of these art forms, Jones presents work exploring cultural confluences in hybridizations that search for a more historically inclusive and complicated brand of neo-modernism based on Jones’ own personal heritage and interests.

Ranging from the advent of the long-playing 78 to the cassette tape and the compact disc, the “Blanks” series explores the formalist language of analogue while referencing the ‘emptiness’ of the digital realm. Here, music packaging functions merely as empty, reconfigured ‘song containers’, shells that once contained something as ephemeral as sound. “Blanks” is a series of collage and ink drawings of ‘blank’ CD cases, album covers, liner notes, cassette racks and other objects – transforming once commonplace music collateral into minimalist art forms akin in look, feel and material to the work of Richard Serra, Carl Andre or Robert Morris.

Jennie C. Jones was the 2008 recipient of the William H. Johnson Prize awarded to emerging African American artists.  Jones joined the ranks of past and present honorees, Sanford Biggers (2009), Rodney McMillian (2007), Edgar Arceneaux (2006), Dave McKenzie (2005), Kori Newkirk (2004), Nadine Robinson (2003) and Laylah Ali (2002). Jones attended Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts where she received her MFA in 1996. Prior to that she attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving a BFA in 1991. Over the past decade she has participated in numerous prestigious artists residency and fellowship programs, both nationally and international, including: The Center for Book Arts, New York (2010), Cité Internationale des Arts-Paris, France (2002-2003), The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency at the World Trade Center (1999) and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1996). In 2008 she was a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study Center as well as a Visiting Artist at The American Academy in Rome, Italy. Her awards include The William H. Johnson Prize and a Creative Capital grant in 2008, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award, in 2006, and a Pollock-Krasner in 2000.  Her recent shows include the exhibition, State of the Art: New York at Urbis in Manchester, UK, and Red, Bird, Blue a solo installation at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in 2009. Her work was included in 30 Seconds Off An Inch at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Recent exhibitions include major solo shows at Sikkema Jenkins, NY, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (solo), and an upcoming group show at The Menil Collection, Houston, TX.