Jenna Crowder is a writer and editor.
With a background in creative writing, sculpture, art history, and interdisciplinary art, she has long worked across publication, criticism, curation, and installation as modes of public practice. Jenna was the Co-Founding Editor of The Chart, an online arts journal that celebrated slow publishing, regionally-specific critical artistic dialogue, and IRL conversation as a form of publishing. Her writing has appeared in monographs, catalogs, and both visual and literary publications such as Art Papers, Boston Art Review, The Brooklyn Rail, BURNAWAY, Temporary Art Review, and Tupelo Quarterly, among other places.
Jenna has been awarded residencies from Joshua Tree National Park, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Ragdale Foundation, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and project grants from the Kindling Fund, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Rabkin Foundation, and the Maine Arts Commission. She currently lives in Washington, DC.
Jenna is available for freelance editing and consulting on creative projects, both short and long-form, that encompass art writing, criticism, creative nonfiction, and fiction.
contact: crowder.jenna [at] gmail.com
With a background in creative writing, sculpture, art history, and interdisciplinary art, she has long worked across publication, criticism, curation, and installation as modes of public practice. Jenna was the Co-Founding Editor of The Chart, an online arts journal that celebrated slow publishing, regionally-specific critical artistic dialogue, and IRL conversation as a form of publishing. Her writing has appeared in monographs, catalogs, and both visual and literary publications such as Art Papers, Boston Art Review, The Brooklyn Rail, BURNAWAY, Temporary Art Review, and Tupelo Quarterly, among other places.
Jenna has been awarded residencies from Joshua Tree National Park, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Ragdale Foundation, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and project grants from the Kindling Fund, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Rabkin Foundation, and the Maine Arts Commission. She currently lives in Washington, DC.
Jenna is available for freelance editing and consulting on creative projects, both short and long-form, that encompass art writing, criticism, creative nonfiction, and fiction.
contact: crowder.jenna [at] gmail.com
Publications
“Lobsters”
Pithead Chapel
forthcoming April 2026
“Art Institution as Collaborative, Living Laboratory: An Interview with Iris Williamson”
& Magazine
Maine College of Art & Design
Winter 2024–2025
“Angels, Birth, Rainbows, Boats, and more: a glimpse into the mind of Dylan Hausthor”
& Magazine
Maine College of Art & Design
Winter 2024–2025
“Collaborative Magic: Makena Schwab on the Cooperative Power of Animation”
& Magazine
Maine College of Art & Design
Winter 2024–2025
“Izzy Van den Heuvel: Someplace I Might Call Home”
Exhibition essay for Ghost Stories for the Faint of Heart
Zand Head Gallery at Maine College of Art & Design
Fall 2024
“A Sit Down with Artist Katherine Bradford”
DecorMaine: The Art Issue
June 2023
“Week 47: “Philip Glass, ‘Metamorphosis One’”
Endless Playlist
Wendy’s Subway
March 2023
“On Fernando A. Flores’s Valleyesque”
Tupelo Quarterly
September 2022
“A Review of Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint”
Tupelo Quarterly
September 2022
“On Hasanthika Sirisena’s Dark Tourist”
Tupelo Quarterly
September 2022
“The View from Pooh Corner”
Profile on the painter Robert S. Neuman
DecorMaine: The Art Issue
June 2022
“Olivia Fredricks: Spring St.”
Exhibition essay for Spring St.
Maine College of Art & Design
June 2021
“Change With(out) a Revolution: Where Institutions Fail Us”
Boston Art Review
Issue 06: Timestamp
Winter 2021
“Highlights from Maine”
Boston Art Review
Issue 05: No Boundaries
Summer 2020
“The Seduction of Marcie Bronstein’s Watercolors”
Being Here: Marcie Jan Bronstein, Watercolor Paintings
Zillman Art Museum at the University of Maine
March 2020
"Desire in Walking and Language"
The Brooklyn Rail Critics Page
March 2020
Untitled essay for Meghan Brady’s Paper Paintings
Publication Studio: Hudson
January 2020
"The Affidamento of Bianca Beck and Sascha Braunig"
The Chart
January 2020
"A conversation amongst two artist writers who witnessed the performance together"
On Myron Beasley’s Repast: Malaga with Imani Roach Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies
Volume 15, Issue 2
May/June 2019
"Second Sight: The Paradox of Vision in Contemporary Art"
Art Papers — 42.04
Winter 2018/2019
"Heavy Water: Erin Johnson at the Jepson Center, Savannah" BURNAWAY
March 2019
"A Conversation Between Jenna Crowder and Carly Glovinski" The Lantern
Colby College
December 2018
"Language at the Edges of Legality: Aliza Shvarts at Artspace New Haven"
Temporary Art Review
June 2018
"The Poetics of Henri Paul Broyard's Interiors"
The Rib
March 2018
“untitled train poem”
ENTER RURAL SCENE
edited by Vivian Ewing
Wash and Fold Press
2017
"Scholarship, Power, & the Agency of Place: Beth Finch on Marsden Hartley"
The Chart
August 2017
"Temp to Perm proves a need for a shared language of public art"
The Chart
June 2017
"Essay: In Maine, If There's an Artistic Will, There's a Way"
VICE Creators
March 2017
"Ann Hirsch, IRL"
The Chart
August 2016
"The Ambling Aesthetics of PLATFORM PROJECTS/WALKS"
The Chart
August 2016
"Rewriting An Unrealized History of War: Fortress Brass on Fort Gorges,"
The Chart
June/July 2016
"Predicting Future Weather: an interview with Anna Wolfe-Pauly & Erin Colleen Johnson"
The Chart
June/July 2016
"Matthew Barney’s Gold Standard: Sex, Violence, & Fundament"
with Douglas W. Milliken
The Chart
March 2016
"Talking to the Walls: Interviews with Portland Mural Initiative" Dispatch Magazine
September 2015
"Better With Foam: Richard Keen's FOREandAFT at Oxbow Blending & Bottling"
Dispatch Magazine
August 2015
"How Many Followers? Alina Gallo at SPACE Gallery"
Dispatch Magazine
July 2015
Select Editing Projects
Hunger Mountain: VCFA Journal of the Arts
copy editor, reader
2022–present
The Record, Indigo Arts Alliance
managing editor
2020–2022, 2024–present
Supervision: On Motherhood and Surveillance
edited by Sophie Hamacher and Jessica Hankey
MIT Press
proofreader, copy editor
2023
The Chart
co-founding and managing editor
2015–2022
Grants, Residencies, & Honors
2025
Joshua Tree National Park December Artist in Residence
2022
Vermont Studio Center Writing Residency and Fellowship
2020
Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Project Grant for The Chart
2019
Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation Grant for The Chart
Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Project Grant for The Chart
2018
Pace House Residency
Maine Arts Commission Project Grant for Artists
Kindling Fund Grant for The Chart (via the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting Program)
Common Field/Field Grant: Writer-in-Residence program, a collaboration between Artspace New Haven with Franklin Street Works, Real Art Ways , and The Chart
2017
Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation Grant for The Chart
Hewnoaks Artist Colony
2016
Hewnoaks Artist Colony
2015
Maine Arts Commission Project Grant for Artists for The Chart
Kindling Fund Grant for The Chart (via the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting Program)
2014
Hewnoaks Artist Colony
2013
Hewnoaks Artist Colony
2008
Ragdale Foundation
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts
Teaching
Spring 2024
[Research & Inquiry] Life After Life: Spirit Communication, Channeling Forces, and Creative Practice
Maine College of Art & Design
Portland ME
Fall 2023
Introduction to Stories & Telling Stories
collaborative class taught in two sections with Mary Canfield
Maine College of Art & Design
Portland ME
Curation
2021
Persephone in the Late Anthropocene
University of New England
Biddeford ME
2018
THIS DESIRE: poetics + longing
Able Baker Contemporary
Portland ME
2014
citydrift/Portland
SPACE Gallery, Zero Station, & Open Bench Project
Portland ME
Select Projects
(email for a full list of visual art projects & exhibitions)
2020–present
The Record
Managing Editor + co-organizer, archive of artists-in-residence at Indigo Arts Alliance
Portland ME
2015–2021
The Chart
Co-Founder + Editor, arts journal that supports creative dialogue through online publishing, print anthologies, and IRL programming
Portland ME/online
2019
The Chart: Visiting Critic Lecture Series
featuring Jacquelyn Gleisner (The Chart's 2019 Critic-in-Residence), Andy Johnson, Jordan Amirkhani, James McAnally, and Leah Triplett Harrington
Portland ME
2018
The Chart: Visiting Critic Lecture + Residency
featuring Imani Roach
Portland ME
2016–2017
MTV Crits!
Co-Creator + Co-Host
series of themed music video screenings + pop culture critiques in collaboration with Nadia Prupis
Portland ME
Panels & Talks
2020
Art+Feminism Panel Discussion
hosted by Jenna Crowder (The Chart) with Julien Langevin (artist), Lareese Hall (Director of the Colby College Libraries), and Marcia Minter (Indigo Arts Alliance)
Portland Museum of Art as part of the Dream Action Factory for Carrie Moyer + Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Times
Portland, ME
2019
"Field Futures?"
mini-presentations with Eva Aguila, Eepi Chaad, Andreana Donahue, Vashti DuBois, Kristan Kennedy, Aaron Levy, Conrad Meyers and Willis Meyers, Jessica Moss, S. Rodriguez, Ekrem Serdar, Christina Vassallo, Mary Welcome, & Nicholas Wylie, organized by Aurora Tang and Courtney Fink
Common Field Convening
Philadelphia PA
2017
"Strategic Criticism: Toward an Arts Writers' Coalition"
panel discussion + session with James McAnally, Sarrita Hunn, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Eunsong Kim, Jessica Lynne, and Cameron Shaw
Common Field Convening
Los Angeles CA
"MTV Crits! dismantle the patriarchy + have fun doing it"
PechaKucha artist talk
Engine
Biddeford ME
“Lobsters”
Pithead Chapel
forthcoming April 2026
“Art Institution as Collaborative, Living Laboratory: An Interview with Iris Williamson”
& Magazine
Maine College of Art & Design
Winter 2024–2025
“Angels, Birth, Rainbows, Boats, and more: a glimpse into the mind of Dylan Hausthor”
& Magazine
Maine College of Art & Design
Winter 2024–2025
“Collaborative Magic: Makena Schwab on the Cooperative Power of Animation”
& Magazine
Maine College of Art & Design
Winter 2024–2025
“Izzy Van den Heuvel: Someplace I Might Call Home”
Exhibition essay for Ghost Stories for the Faint of Heart
Zand Head Gallery at Maine College of Art & Design
Fall 2024
“A Sit Down with Artist Katherine Bradford”
DecorMaine: The Art Issue
June 2023
“Week 47: “Philip Glass, ‘Metamorphosis One’”
Endless Playlist
Wendy’s Subway
March 2023
“On Fernando A. Flores’s Valleyesque”
Tupelo Quarterly
September 2022
“A Review of Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint”
Tupelo Quarterly
September 2022
“On Hasanthika Sirisena’s Dark Tourist”
Tupelo Quarterly
September 2022
“The View from Pooh Corner”
Profile on the painter Robert S. Neuman
DecorMaine: The Art Issue
June 2022
“Olivia Fredricks: Spring St.”
Exhibition essay for Spring St.
Maine College of Art & Design
June 2021
“Change With(out) a Revolution: Where Institutions Fail Us”
Boston Art Review
Issue 06: Timestamp
Winter 2021
“Highlights from Maine”
Boston Art Review
Issue 05: No Boundaries
Summer 2020
“The Seduction of Marcie Bronstein’s Watercolors”
Being Here: Marcie Jan Bronstein, Watercolor Paintings
Zillman Art Museum at the University of Maine
March 2020
"Desire in Walking and Language"
The Brooklyn Rail Critics Page
March 2020
Untitled essay for Meghan Brady’s Paper Paintings
Publication Studio: Hudson
January 2020
"The Affidamento of Bianca Beck and Sascha Braunig"
The Chart
January 2020
"A conversation amongst two artist writers who witnessed the performance together"
On Myron Beasley’s Repast: Malaga with Imani Roach Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies
Volume 15, Issue 2
May/June 2019
"Second Sight: The Paradox of Vision in Contemporary Art"
Art Papers — 42.04
Winter 2018/2019
"Heavy Water: Erin Johnson at the Jepson Center, Savannah" BURNAWAY
March 2019
"A Conversation Between Jenna Crowder and Carly Glovinski" The Lantern
Colby College
December 2018
"Language at the Edges of Legality: Aliza Shvarts at Artspace New Haven"
Temporary Art Review
June 2018
"The Poetics of Henri Paul Broyard's Interiors"
The Rib
March 2018
“untitled train poem”
ENTER RURAL SCENE
edited by Vivian Ewing
Wash and Fold Press
2017
"Scholarship, Power, & the Agency of Place: Beth Finch on Marsden Hartley"
The Chart
August 2017
"Temp to Perm proves a need for a shared language of public art"
The Chart
June 2017
"Essay: In Maine, If There's an Artistic Will, There's a Way"
VICE Creators
March 2017
"Ann Hirsch, IRL"
The Chart
August 2016
"The Ambling Aesthetics of PLATFORM PROJECTS/WALKS"
The Chart
August 2016
"Rewriting An Unrealized History of War: Fortress Brass on Fort Gorges,"
The Chart
June/July 2016
"Predicting Future Weather: an interview with Anna Wolfe-Pauly & Erin Colleen Johnson"
The Chart
June/July 2016
"Matthew Barney’s Gold Standard: Sex, Violence, & Fundament"
with Douglas W. Milliken
The Chart
March 2016
"Talking to the Walls: Interviews with Portland Mural Initiative" Dispatch Magazine
September 2015
"Better With Foam: Richard Keen's FOREandAFT at Oxbow Blending & Bottling"
Dispatch Magazine
August 2015
"How Many Followers? Alina Gallo at SPACE Gallery"
Dispatch Magazine
July 2015
Select Editing Projects
Hunger Mountain: VCFA Journal of the Arts
copy editor, reader
2022–present
The Record, Indigo Arts Alliance
managing editor
2020–2022, 2024–present
Supervision: On Motherhood and Surveillance
edited by Sophie Hamacher and Jessica Hankey
MIT Press
proofreader, copy editor
2023
The Chart
co-founding and managing editor
2015–2022
Grants, Residencies, & Honors
2025
Joshua Tree National Park December Artist in Residence
2022
Vermont Studio Center Writing Residency and Fellowship
2020
Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Project Grant for The Chart
2019
Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation Grant for The Chart
Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Project Grant for The Chart
2018
Pace House Residency
Maine Arts Commission Project Grant for Artists
Kindling Fund Grant for The Chart (via the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting Program)
Common Field/Field Grant: Writer-in-Residence program, a collaboration between Artspace New Haven with Franklin Street Works, Real Art Ways , and The Chart
2017
Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation Grant for The Chart
Hewnoaks Artist Colony
2016
Hewnoaks Artist Colony
2015
Maine Arts Commission Project Grant for Artists for The Chart
Kindling Fund Grant for The Chart (via the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting Program)
2014
Hewnoaks Artist Colony
2013
Hewnoaks Artist Colony
2008
Ragdale Foundation
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts
Teaching
Spring 2024
[Research & Inquiry] Life After Life: Spirit Communication, Channeling Forces, and Creative Practice
Maine College of Art & Design
Portland ME
Fall 2023
Introduction to Stories & Telling Stories
collaborative class taught in two sections with Mary Canfield
Maine College of Art & Design
Portland ME
Curation
2021
Persephone in the Late Anthropocene
University of New England
Biddeford ME
2018
THIS DESIRE: poetics + longing
Able Baker Contemporary
Portland ME
2014
citydrift/Portland
SPACE Gallery, Zero Station, & Open Bench Project
Portland ME
Select Projects
(email for a full list of visual art projects & exhibitions)
2020–present
The Record
Managing Editor + co-organizer, archive of artists-in-residence at Indigo Arts Alliance
Portland ME
2015–2021
The Chart
Co-Founder + Editor, arts journal that supports creative dialogue through online publishing, print anthologies, and IRL programming
Portland ME/online
2019
The Chart: Visiting Critic Lecture Series
featuring Jacquelyn Gleisner (The Chart's 2019 Critic-in-Residence), Andy Johnson, Jordan Amirkhani, James McAnally, and Leah Triplett Harrington
Portland ME
2018
The Chart: Visiting Critic Lecture + Residency
featuring Imani Roach
Portland ME
2016–2017
MTV Crits!
Co-Creator + Co-Host
series of themed music video screenings + pop culture critiques in collaboration with Nadia Prupis
Portland ME
Panels & Talks
2020
Art+Feminism Panel Discussion
hosted by Jenna Crowder (The Chart) with Julien Langevin (artist), Lareese Hall (Director of the Colby College Libraries), and Marcia Minter (Indigo Arts Alliance)
Portland Museum of Art as part of the Dream Action Factory for Carrie Moyer + Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Times
Portland, ME
2019
"Field Futures?"
mini-presentations with Eva Aguila, Eepi Chaad, Andreana Donahue, Vashti DuBois, Kristan Kennedy, Aaron Levy, Conrad Meyers and Willis Meyers, Jessica Moss, S. Rodriguez, Ekrem Serdar, Christina Vassallo, Mary Welcome, & Nicholas Wylie, organized by Aurora Tang and Courtney Fink
Common Field Convening
Philadelphia PA
2017
"Strategic Criticism: Toward an Arts Writers' Coalition"
panel discussion + session with James McAnally, Sarrita Hunn, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Eunsong Kim, Jessica Lynne, and Cameron Shaw
Common Field Convening
Los Angeles CA
"MTV Crits! dismantle the patriarchy + have fun doing it"
PechaKucha artist talk
Engine
Biddeford ME