“Cerrado y Cuidado”, 2019. Social engagement / intervention in Mexico City on Avenida Francisco Madero. Part of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics “Encuentro 2019.”

Packard Jennings is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the invisible levers of late capitalism on human consciousness, the environment, and public space. He interrogates political and corporate transgressions against the interests of a collaborative society and the natural world. He experiments with ways in which power can be subverted or voluntarily relinquish its grip. His collaborative work with the Studio for Urban Projects focuses on community engagement, sustainability, urban resilience, and climate adaptation.

Although he primarily works in public spaces, his work has been shown in galleries and museums in throughout the U.S. and internationally in Geneva, Turin, Paris, Stuttgart, Madrid, Ljubljana, Vancouver and Barcelona. His work has been published in several books, including: From the Ground Up, Art and Agenda, Urban Interventions, the BLDG BLOG book, and We Own the Night. His work has garnered critical media attention in The Boston Globe, Artforum, Flash Art, the Believer, Adbusters, New American Painting, the Washington Post, and the front page of the New York Times. 

He has attended 14 residencies, including SOMA, Mexico City, Mexico and Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, France, and Headlands Center for the Arts, in California.

He holds an MFA from Alfred University. He has been teaching interdisciplinary courses, social engagement, sculpture, time-based arts, and photography since 2011. He has taught courses at UC Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, and Dominican University. He was born and raised in Oakland, CA and has lived in, worked in and helped run the historic 45th Street Artists’ Cooperative in Emeryville, California since 2017.

With very few exceptions, Packard makes all his own work, including sculpture, 3D modeling /printing, video production and post production, script writing, music arrangement, dmx light programming, large-scale projection, animation, carpentry, welding, screen printing, paint finishing, illustration, graphic design, photography and his own maple or alder picture frames.