Jenny Welden is a textile artist making maplike fiber networks through abstract painting, collage quilting, gesture drawing, free-motion embroidery, and somatic meditation. Her unique multimedia work continues to captivate audiences, spark excitement from strangers, and earn sales in the tens of thousands.
As the daughter of peripatetics, she has come to find her home as a series of vast and often invisible networks as she travels from place to place. Her work and expansive research has brought her across the world, from choreographing for an international dance team in Germany, to conducting art historical research in Italy, Spain, and Guatemala, to creating community art happenings in China, to teaching over twenty different styles of ballroom dance in Colorado, to teaching figure drawing, language, and textiles at universities in the central united states over the past seven years.
She earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting and Textiles from Colorado College in 2017. She earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Textiles and Expanded Media from the University of Kansas in 2022. There, she taught several textile courses, including Quiltmaking: Contemporary Improvisation, which became an instant hit with the students and a beloved hub for community, craft, healing, and self-discovery through the process of making quilts from start to finish, using hand-dyed fabrics and no patterns or rulers.
Her 2022 solo conceptual show, TerMinAL mA, explored female ancestral memory through heirloom objects, and featured reliquary boxes, circles of salt, handmade furniture, a community stitch project, apparitional appearances, and an original film–all in a hand-built architectural environment.
Her 2022 solo commercial show, Lifeline, featured over 45 original artworks, including quilts, paintings, banners, and small sculptures. The show culminated her onsite residency, in which she was commissioned to create a set of mural banners for Colby’s annual downtown ArtWalk.
Her ongoing land project/community housing residency, House of Clay (2021- present), uses principles of permaculture and biophilic design to heal generational trauma through the bones of my mother’s once-vacant property in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
Currently, she lives in Castle Rock, Colorado, embracing a multigenerational household while raising her new baby, Moses, as she creates her next body of work for her solo show, Everyday Saints, premiering August 30, 2024, at the ArtBase Gallery in Basalt, Colorado.
She is interested in folk arts, permaculture, natural building, gardening, getting dressed, and the ways of life our ancestors lived prior to the industrial revolution. She enjoys hot springs, traveling with her writer/professor husband, dancing, and time in the sauna.
