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Jennifer Torres, M.F.A.
Associate Professor of Art
Sculpture / Design
E-mail: jennifer.torres@usm.edu
URL: www.jentorres.com
B.F.A., Cooper Union
M.F.A., University of Georgia
Studied at the Art Students League, N.Y.
Visual Arts Faculty
Jennifer Torres served as the department chair since her arrival at Southern Miss in 1999. She stepped> down in the fall of 2005 to get back into what she loves the most, teaching and making art. Her teaching responsibilities will be mostly in the sculpture area of the Art and Design program.
Over the past several years she has been working hard to build the Southern Miss iron casting program. Working with a generous in-kind contribution of engineering, materials and manpower from Tommy Dulaney and Structural Steel Services Inc. of Meridian Mississippi and tapping the talents of then technician Durant Thompson she was able to get Southern Miss one of the largest University run iron pouring cupolas in the United States and maybe the world. Donnie Keen of Keen Foundries also contributed equipment and valuable time and resources to the project. Many other talented artists and craftspeople, including, Skip VanHouten, Butch Jack, Ira Hill, Nathan Goodson, and numerous others, played key rolls in helping the program reach new heights. In April of 2006 she was invited along with current technician, Jason Kimes, to The International Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art, in Ironbridge England, to speak on a panel about the cupola and program.
A working artist, she exhibits her installations regularly around the South and Midwest. She has shown in Atlanta, Tallahassee, and Wichita; Louisiana, North Carolina, and Massachusetts; and many other locations. She completed her undergraduate degree in the late 1980’s at the Cooper Union in New York City and her graduate MFA degree a number of years later at the University of Georgia. She also spent most of her high school years studying at the Art Students League of New York on weekends and during summer months.