About the Artist

Jen T. Mills

In her piece, Portal, artist Jen Mills responds to a site at Spa Del Lago in Seattle, specifically, the storm drain located outside the front door. Overlooked and ignored, people walk by the drain without realizing that this particular place is where rainwater begins to find its way back to the sea. Portal draws attention to this transition between the seen and the unseen, and both references and simplifies an overlooked object that we rely on everyday.

This tendency to simplify and distill comes from the landscape of Jen’s early upbringing in Colorado; a land of both mountains and plains where the cover of snow makes all things equal.  Jen sees that the light of the Pacific Northwest has a way of softening the landscape also, and over the last fifteen years the blue-grey light and the green-blue waters of the Puget Sound have become an intrinsic part of her being.

As an artist, she is interested in the everyday: from noticing overlooked actions to drawing attention to objects that many take for granted. She sees herself as a clue-giver, and the objects and installations that she creates are a place for people to paticipate in a unique kind of conversation.