Jenn Jansen is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in the village of Zuidlaren, Drenthe. She lives with her husband and daughter in a small country house on the threshold of a heathland nature reserve. Her work is deeply influenced + informed by this place and her relationship with the plants, flowers and pigment beings within and around it. She is drawn also to the dolmens punctuating the Drentse countryside, which permeate the air with a sense of mystery and wonder. These megalithic structures intensify her fertile imagination and arouse a persistent sense of reverence. All her work is infused with her drive for authenticity, self-expression and meaning-making.
Jenn was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, alongside her familial female creative counterparts. Her mother founded a quilt shop in a historic old grange building, and the decade spent in this place sewing, teaching, learning and communing with her mother, grandmother, sisters and niece form the bedrock of her own creative values and practice.
Jenn studied French language, fine arts and art history at Portland State University and has an M.Ed. in Education and a Bachelor of Arts in French and Art History. Over the years, she has dabbled in natural dyeing, inkmaking, photography, printmaking, drawing, quilting, embroidery, dance, theatre, voice acting, writing, storytelling, weaving, ceramics, crocheting, knitting and basketry.
Studio Handcræft is Jenn’s atelier, housed in an old garage on her family’s small Drentse homestead.
Jenn Jansen 