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About

Glenna Jennings is an artist and educator whose work draws primarily from the history, theory and practice of photography. She completed her MFA in Visual Arts at the University of California San Diego and holds BAs in English and Spanish (Pepperdine), and a BFA in Photography (Art Center College of Design). She is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Dayton’s Department of Art and Design, where she heads up the photography program and serves as the Hanley Sustainability Institute’s Director for Engaging Communities Beyond Campus. Jennings has exhibited widely throughout the US, China, Europe, and Mexico, and her work resides in multiple public and private collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York and AMNUA Museum in Nanjing, China. She was featured in the 2010 California Biennial, the 2014 Ping Yao Photography Festival in China and the 2019 Rust Belt Biennial. Recognition of her work includes two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards, a Peter McGrath Human Rights Fellowship, and a a Robert Rauschenberg Award through 2019 Photolucida Critical Mass.

Jennings is a passionate educator whose teaching, research and service inform her dynamic, transdisciplinary practice of image-making, curating and socially-engaged creation. Her work in the local community focuses on food justice and social equity through collaborations with partners including the member-owned grocery cooperative Gem City Market, Co-Op Dayton, Expressions of Life, Unified Power, The Collaboratory, and The Foodbank Dayton. Jennings’ work with the multidisciplinary event Dinner in the Desert Kitchen was recognized with a Montgomery County 2019 Food Champion award, and she is currently working with a team of local artists to complete a community mural at Gem City Market through funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Glenna is indebted to friends, family and collaborators far and wide in her ongoing efforts to realize a more just, equitable and sustainable future through both hard work and purposeful play.

For more information on Glenna’s socially-engaged advocacy and teaching, please see the video produced for her 2022 University of Dayton Excellence in Teaching Award.