Jennifer Marsh
Director
In 2008, Visual Artist Jennifer Marsh launched her first global public art project called the Gas Station Wrap. With the help from professional and amateur artists from 15 countries and more than 2,500 grade-school students in 31 states, Marsh covered a 50-year-old former Citgo station – pumps, light stands, signs and all – with more than 3,000 fiber panels that were crocheted, knitted, quilted or stitched together.
Marsh, originally from Ohio, got interested in using sculpture as a social medium after a volunteer trip to Dharmasala, India. To pursue her ideas for community-based art projects, Marsh founded the International Fiber Collaborative, Inc. The IFC, Inc. is a non-profit organization whose mission is to reach artists, students, individuals, and communities around the globe through art, contribute to social awareness, and to develop dialogs among the larger community creating unique and inspiring initiatives.
The Gas Station Wrap was followed by the Interdependence Tree Project, in 2009, with the help of more than 8,000 students, 62 schools, and quilters from 23 counties and 39 states. The Independence Tree is made of more than 14,000 handmade leaves for the canopy of a fabric-covered 32’ Tall and 25’ wide metal tree mimicking the shape of a live oak and now stands in its permanent home, the rotunda of the Huntsville Earlyworks Children’s Museum. Gaining greater international support with every project, Marsh aims for her third community-based public art initiative called The Dream Rocket, to be displayed at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Marsh, who earned her Master of Fine Arts from the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University in New York, has exhibited in museums, galleries, and arts and crafts festivals throughout the country, gallery venues have included the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Central Washington University, and was a part of the Sanlun Tishu Collaborative in Beijing, China. Marsh’s prized collaborative efforts have resulted in global attention through the press sectors.
