Pazienza, Jennifer

Jennifer Pazienza is a recently retired art education professor with the University of New Brunswick. Born in Newark, New Jersey the daughter of Italian immigrants, she began making art as a child in her mother’s kitchen. She resides with her husband Gerry Clarke and their dog Mela in Keswick Ridge, New Brunswick, Canada. For nearly twenty-five years Gerry and Jennifer have been regular visitors to the Berkshires including lengthy stays on sabbatical leaves. It is their home away from home. Jennifer has passed many hours at IS 183 drawing until she drops!

After teaching art in elementary and secondary schools in Pennsylvania, Pazienza earned a MEd in 1985 and a PhD in 1989 in art education with minors in painting from the Pennsylvania State University. She credits her supervising professor, Brent Wilson, as her inspiration for becoming an artist/educator. Her painting professor, artist Richard Mayhew, has had the greatest influence on her artwork suggesting in 1984 that she ditch her tube of Payne’s Gray and tonal painting. She has been exploring the possibilities of a limited colourist palette ever since.

In 1987-88, she taught art education at Texas Tech University, where she also learned to blow glass. The following year she moved to the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. But it was the University of New Brunswick, with its promise of academic freedom and its high regard for artistic forms of teaching and research that won her heart. In 1989 with an offer she could not refuse, she joined the Faculty of Education. Jennifer has given scholarly papers at conferences in Canada, the US and Europe, has worked as a research consultant in the US, the Royal Kingdom of Bhutan, and Canada. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses, published articles and chapters in books while maintaining a studio and exhibition practice. At her alma mater last October, Dr. Pazienza gave the keynote address, Beautiful Dreamer, a reflection on beauty, landscape and justice for GRAE, a graduate research in art education conference and this July Floating Carrots, oil on canvas, was accepted into School of Visual Arts 50th anniversary alumni show.

Jennifer worked with Sicilian artisans at Artigianato del Sole in 2005, which resulted in a commissioned ceramic tile panel for Azienda Agricola Alcalà. During Canada’s celebration of its Fine Craft tradition, she served as artist/educator in residence at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery interpreting contemporary and historical craft objects in paintings. She returned to Alcalà and her Italian roots again in the spring of 2007 to paint a mural that celebrates Sicilian citrus and its craft tradition—majolica ceramics.

Jennifer Pazienza’s work is held in Public and Corporate Collections of the Provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, numerous private collections throughout Canada, the US and Italy, and she is represented by Ingrid Mueller Art+Concepts Gallery in Fredericton, NB and Jonathan Bancroft-Snell Gallery in London, Ontario.

For additional information, please visit:  www.jenniferpazienza.com