Jillian Mcdonald is a Canadian artist, currently living in New York. She is Associate Professor of Fine Art at Pace University, where she also curates and co-directs the Pace Digital Gallery. Originally from Winnipeg, she dreams of the snow-covered prairie.
Recent solo shows and projects include Moti Hasson Gallery and Jack the Pelican Presents in New York; Third Avenue Gallery in Vancouver; The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery; Third Avenue Gallery in Chicago; 1708 Gallery in Richmond, Virginia; vertexList Gallery and ArtMoving Projects in Brooklyn; TPW (presented at The Drake Hotel) and YYZ in Toronto; Video Pool in Winnipeg; and Edge Media in Newfoundland. Group exhibitions and festivals featuring her work include The Edith Russ Haus for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany, The Krannert Museum in Illinois; MMOCA in Wisconsin, The Whitney Museum's Artport, Year Zero One in Toronto, Manifestation d'Art Internationale de Québec, 404 International Festival of Electronic Art in Argentina, La Sala Naranja in Spain, The Sundance Online Film Festival in Utah, The Cleveland International Performance Art Festival, La Biennale de Montréal, ISEA 2004 in Estonia, and the Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie in France.
Mcdonald received grants from The Canada Council for the Arts, Soil New Media, Turbulence, The Gunk Foundation, NYSCA, The Experimental Television Center, Thirdplace.org, and Pace University. She lectures regularly in North America and Europe about her work and attends numerous residencies including The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Program and Harvestworks in New York; DAIMON, Sagamie, and La Chambre Blanche in Québec; CFAT in Halifax; Em-Media in Calgary; and The Western Front in Vancouver. She is a 2008 resident at The Headlands Center for the Arts in California and a 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Video Fellow.
Mcdonald's work is featured and reviewed in The New York Times, Flash Art, Art Papers, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and The Village Voice, among others. A discussion of Me and Billy Bob appears in Stalking, a book by Bran Nicol.
Recently she discovered playing keyboard, backpacking, rock climbing, cycling, and running half marathons with Beckley Roberts. In 2007 she ran her first marathon in Atlanta, GA. Some of her favourite people are strangers.
~photos L - R: backpacking in The Adirondacks; 16-mile January run in Central Park; on top of Mt Marcy; reading with Dad, 1970s