Santa Fe Art Institute

Jess Zeglin

Jess Zeglin (she/her) is an artist and gardener based in the middle Rio Grande valley. Her works in sound, drawing, textiles, and installation illuminate enmeshments between ecological and human systems. As a European-American, her work begins from acknowledgment of the violence that paves her way to exist on this land and a search for more just and reciprocal methods of inhabiting living spaces. Often process-based and grounded in theories of emergence, her works address threatened ecosystems and cultural-ecosystem interactions, emphasizing listening, attentiveness, nourishment, and tending practices that bridge biological and conceptual divides.

Zeglin has exhibited place-based installations in the Sonoran desert, Rio Grande bosque and arid grasslands, tallgrass prairie, and central and eastern woodlands. Her work has been shown at the University of New Mexico Art Museum, Birds+Richards Gallery, and Trapdoor Projects Gallery in Albuquerque, NM; Vital Spaces Gallery in Santa Fe, NM; and the Weisman Art Museum and Science Museum of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, MN. She has participated in a Sevilleta LTER fellowship and the Playa, Tallgrass, and Studios at MASS MoCA artist residencies, and holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Minnesota and a Master of Fine Arts in Art and Ecology from the University of New Mexico.