Artist Spotlight #8: JODY ZELLEN
Rhizomatic Arts is proud to feature members of our Sustainability Network who are doing good in their communities through their creative and professional practice. JODY ZELLEN is an artist, designer, writer, educator, and co-creator of What's on Los Angeles, a comprehensive weekly online listing of local arts exhibitions, openings, and closings in L.A.
Tell us about your work!
I am an artist, web designer, arts writer and educator. My creative and professional practices are intertwined as often what I am working on professionally — teaching web design or making apps or designing catalogs — finds its way into my artwork. I have created public art, net art, and app art, as well as room-sized site-specific interactive installations. As a writer, I see so many exhibitions in Los Angeles that I felt compelled to create a mobile friendly website to make visiting galleries easier. whatsonlosangeles.com launched in 2013 and is updated on a weekly basis.
How does your art practice relate to your work as a professional? How do you organize your hybrid career life?
In my professional life I like to be challenged creatively and try to find opportunities where I am learning and improving or updating my skill set at all times. I like to be busy so am always seeking new art-related projects. It is either really busy or nothing at all, and never an even flow. I tend to juggle many things at the same time.
What would a sustainable career look like for you?
I would love to find support for What's on Los Angeles, as I devote an inordinate amount of time keeping the listings up to date and adding new venues but as of yet have not found a way to make it self-sustaining. I love making websites and coding and would like nothing more than to help other artists maintain their websites or design publications or write essays about others' artworks.
What do you love about your work?
I love making things and writing and linking ideas together. I think the work that I am most proud of are the apps I have made over the last five years. What I like about them is that they are self contained artworks that people can download for free and carry in their pockets. They exist outside the traditional gallery sphere; I see them as a form of public art.
What's coming up next for you?
My next great adventure will be running in the Boston marathon in April 2017. Other projects for 2017 include an installation of work at LAX as part of the Los Angeles World Airways project. I will have over 60 paintings on view in Terminal 3. I am also having at exhibition at Long Beach City College that opens February 9. The show will feature my interactive app News Wheel projected in the space accompanied by a sound installation by Daniel Rothman. It will be our first collaboration.
