Title: Everyone is a Critic.

Artists Statement:

After 8 years living in Portland, OR this will be the first year that artist Jen Delos Reyes will not be in attendance at PICA's TBA festival. Part FOMO, part fostering critical dialogue, and part a longing to stay connected to the creative community she grew to love dearly, Delos Reyes is inviting you to text her your thoughts, feelings, and micro-reviews of the 2015 TBA festival. Messages received will be shared through the Albatross blog with the anonymity of the sender respected.

Bio:

Jen Delos Reyes was born in the city of Winnipeg, and educated first in its local music scene of the mid-90’s infused with the energy of Riot grrrl and DIY, and then in its university. How she works today is rooted in what she learned in her formative years as a show organizer, listener, creator of zines, and band member.

Delos Reyes is a creative laborer, educator, writer, and radical community arts organizer. Her practice is as much about working with institutions as it is about creating and supporting sustainable artist-led culture. Delos Reyes worked within Portland State University from 2008-2014 to create the first flexible residency Art and Social Practice MFA program in the United States and devised the curriculum that focused on place, engagement, and dialogue.

She has worked with the Portland Art Museum from 2009-2014 to create a series of programs and integrated systems that allow for artists to rethink what can happen in a museum, and reinvigorate the idea of the museum as a public space.

She is the director and founder of Open Engagement, an international annual conference on socially engaged art that has been active since 2007 and hosted seven conferences in two countries at locations including the Queens Museum in New York, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. She is currently working on I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About in My Song: How Artists Make and Live Lives of Meaning, a book exploring the artist impetus toward art and everyday life. She based in Chicago, IL and is the Associate Director of the School of Art and Art History at UIC.