Narrative / Biography

Jerelyn Hanrahan's artistic career began with a Bachelors of Arts degree from the University of Maryland in College Park where she studied with David Driscoll, Anne Truit, Martin Puryear, and William Willis.
 
In 2002 she received an M.F.A. in Computer Arts from the School of Visual Arts . 

She has traveled extensively throughout India, Asia, Korea, Europe, Cuba and the United States. Jerelyn Hanrahan has been interviewed on three occasions for the PS1 / Museum of Modern Art radio station, and on National Public Radio with Margo Adler, the BBC in New York and London, Telli –Bern in Switzerland, Air Canada in Toronto and on Havana T.V. in Cuba. Her work has been favorably reviewed by Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, Newsday,neue bildende kunst, Time Out Magazine, the Village Voice, NYArts, the Brooklyn Rail, Tages Anzeiger , Kunst Bulletin, Art Observer, Adbusters and The Resident, as well as many local newspapers and numerous international publications. 

In 2012 she installed Graduated Pearls, a fifty foot public art work exhibited at Jim Kempner Fine Arts Gallery, located in Chelsea, New York. Graduated Pearls was part of an exhibition curated by Dru Arstark entitled BLING. 

On October 12, 2011,  the 50 foot interactive public sculpture which functions as a public bench was initially sited in Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park, located in Oyster Bay, Long Island , New York. The project was part of the New York Foundation for the Arts, Fiscal Sponsorship Program.

In the summer of 2009, her drawings were exhibited in the 
Aargau Kunsthaus, in Switzerland, and the Venice Pavilion, in Venice, Italy, and Beijing, China. Her drawings have also been exhibited at Galerie Rohmer Apotheke in Zurich, Switzerland in 2005, and in a solo exhibition at Art Magazin, Rolf Muller in Zurich. 

In 1997, a book of 97 drawings entitled Notations On A Trek was published by Andreas Zust. The book release was accompanied by a solo exhibition of drawings at Art Magazin, Rolf Muller Galerie in Zurich, Switzerland, and a reading of the text by Max Blagg at the Drawing Center in New York.

In 2009, Ms. Hanrahan’s drawing series Schwartz Blumen (black flowers), represented by Brooklyn’s Pierogi 2000 Gallery,were on view at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsberg, Pennsylvania.  

Hanrahan was listed by Pulse Magazine as a VIP artist for 2010 .
As an internationally accomplished artist, professor and curator, her two and three-dimensional, public sculpture, museum and gallery installations, video and digital work are exhibited, published and awarded throughout North America and Europe.

Her public installation,  Nite - Out, was sited in the atruim of the 
Tilles Center for the Performing Arts , Brookville, New York. 
Nite - Out was selected by the Tilles panel in conjunction with the 30th Anniversary of the Tilles center and accompanied by the Jazz ensemble of Lincoln Center accompanied by Wynton Marsalis.  

Ms. Hanrahan also continuously coordinates prestigious exhibitions, lectures and symposia of historical and contemporary art for an international audience. Her most recent curatorial project was,
These Are A few of my Favorite Things, an exhibition of 16 contemporary artists. The exhibition was installed at The End,  a 6,000 square foot cultural center located overlooking the east river in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

She was an active member of the Sculptors Guild of New York for five years and was elected President of the Board of Trustees in 2006. The Sculptors Guild is a non-profit organization supporting the careers of sculptors since 1938. Ms. Hanrahan rapidly expanded its audience and achievements on an international scale.

Jerelyn Hanrahan curated and coordinated In-Site, an exhibition on Governors Island consisting of 65 international artists. The exhibition was aired on televised and radio broadcast, and published in Time Out, NYArts, Brooklyn Rail, New York Times, New York Magazine and a variety of other publications. Simultaneously she was instrumental in securing the Governors Island venue for future sculpture exhibitions.

In April 2007, she coordinated the Sculptors Guild at the Art Cologne art fair in Germany, and Sweden’s Supermarket Art-fair. Ms. Hanrahan assisted in the coordination of Windows on Fifth, where contemporary art was on view in the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue, New York.

Ms. Hanrahan curated Archival to Contemporary/ 75 Years of the Sculptors Guild  at the Hillwood Art Museum located on the campus of Long Island University, C.W.Post campus, Brookville, Long Island, New York featured luminary sculptors such as Louise Bourgeois, David Smith, Louise Nevelson, Chaim Gross, William Zorach, Clement Meadmore and many others. Interviews and reviews were aired on public television and published in the New York Times, Sculpture magazine , Oyster Bay Guardian and the Enterprise Pilot

Ms. Hanrahan’s many interactive and sculptural public works have been sited with the collaboration of Creative Time Inc., LMCC, Symbiosis, Kiosk / Kunstkanal, Bern, Switzerland, and the Burning Man Foundation in the financial District of New York, Bern, Switzerland, Toronto, Canada, and Nevada. Other public sites include Adelphi Biennial, Tilles Performing Arts Center, and the city of White Plains.

Jerelyn Hanrahan's international public work, Gesture As Value, was sited in Bern, Switzerland at the Galerie Francesca Pia, the Bank of Symbiosis in Toronto, Canada, and in the Financial District of New York. National Public Radio, PS1/ MOMA, Art and Technology radio , BBC, Telle-Bern (Swiss television) and Artdirt (web-based radio talk show) broadcast interviews with the artist on her work. The project is included in the book publication Sweet Dreams, by Johanna Drucker, Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia.

Jerelyn Hanrahan’s multi-media works were screened and exhibited at the VII and VIII International Digital Exhibition and Colloquium in Havana, Cuba in 2005-6, for which she received an SOS travel grant to attend her exhibition, from the New York Foundation for the Arts and was interviewed on a televised broadcast in Cuba.

In 2004, Ms. Hanrahan completed her video work Dog Toothed Jewels during an artist residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; the video was screened in Havana, Cuba, and presented at Scope / New York, and Scope / Miami with PAM (Perpetual Art Machine, video portal). The Dog Toothed Jewel digital prints were also exhibited through group exhibitions at the Stadt Galerie in Kiel, Germany in 2003 and the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in 2005. Ms. Hanrahan also hosted the SIGGRAPH, NYC Forum at NYIT that year, and curated and coordinated an exhibition featuring the Digi Girls, a group of professional artists investigating the digital domain.

Highlights from Jerelyn Hanrahan’s extensive history of grants and awards include: a 2008, 2007, and 2006 Special Opportunity Stipends and Sponsorship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 1997, 1999, 2003 and 2005-17; a Burning Man Foundation artist grant in 2005, and artist and project funding from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in 1999. Ms.Hanrahan has received project support from NCR Media Systems, Creative Time Inc, LMCC, Thundergulch, and the Pro-Helvetia Arts Council of Switzerland, as well as the Puffin Foundation and support from Switzerland’s Fondation Nestle and Stadt Bern.