Visiting Artist Jen Delos Reyes: Open Engagement founder in Grand Rapids

In 2015, I made a road trip to Pittsburgh to experience Open Engagement — a conference devoted to looking at the ways that art can intersect with society outside of the gallery walls. In other words, where can art live if it is not in a studio, corporate collection, or on your home walls?

Little did I know at the time, but Open Engagement’s yearly eye-opening event was the creation and under the direction of Jen Delos Reyes, who will be the first guest speaker at the 2016 – 2017 Visiting Artist Lecture at Grand Valley State University (GVSU).

In keeping with the 2016-2017 lecture series theme of “Art and the Radical,” Reyes — a dynamic artist, educator, writer, and radical community arts organizer — will lead the audience through a series of examples of how one can create, support, and ultimately sustain an artist-led culture. 

Reyes recently released, “I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About in My Song: How Artists Make and Live Lives of Meaning,” a new book that details how art can merge within everyday life, and how doing so can shift power structures all around us.

Reyes was with the Portland State University from 2008-2014, where she created the first flexible residency Art and Social Practice MFA program in the United States and later devised a curriculum that focuses on place, engagement, and dialogue. Currently, she lives and works in Chicago, where she is the Associate Director of the School of Art and Art History at the University of Illinois Chicago. In 2017 Open Engagement will arrive in Chicago for its yearly conference after being in Oakland in 2016. 

According to GVSU, Art and the Radical’s focus this year features creative workers whose projects seek to deepen our understanding of the world by revealing alternate histories, highlighting marginalized communities, and challenging widely held beliefs and traditions.
 
Upcoming artists include Nicolas Lampert (Nov.7,) Jeanne Vaccaro (TBA), and Beatriz Santiago Munoz (TBA.)

Admission: Free