OUT OF PRINT – Editorial Writing

INANIMATE – “Tiny” Story Garden

Artist Statement:
I make films to give the haunts freedom.

I am often tortured by safety and repetition. We are not delicate beings. We are human, adaptable, recoverable, independent and transformable. I have a connection to materials that embody danger, coarse and fragmented wood, obtuse rusted unprotected metals, broken glass, warped walls and peeling paint. I prefer a time that hasn’t happened yet, but whose sense lives only in daguerreotypes, forgotten factories, closed asylums or abandoned towns. It is from these places my dirty wicked children emerge brandishing objects not suited for fragile little hands, deviously looking for a way to survive, to remind us of a resilience we once possessed.

It is our scars which are our most prominent testimonies to having lived.

Jena graduated from Temple University with a BS in economics. She co-created UNCUT PRODUCTIONS in 2003 with Mark A. Dahl and Benjamin Kanes. In 2005 She created SWEETBREADSTUDIOS with Sharon Roggio, Dawn M. Smith and Jonathan Hafer. Since inception she has written, produced and directed a veritable menagerie of strange works while operating within the delightfully restrictive confines of a bizarre corporate world.

Outside of Uncut and Sweetbreads she has assisted many great talents such as David Von Roehm, MediaGiants, Nehst Studios and Larry Meistrich, Willie Nelson’s Luck Films, Julia Othmer, Traverse Arts Project, Interpret Green, MBN Studios, the students of ChARTer Tech Highschool for the Performing arts, TLA, The Fringe Festival, Peek-a-Boo Revue, Norm Macera, Matthew Russell, Saint Sinner Entertainment, Ningun, Mark Kohanowitz, Main Street Productions, Willie Nelson’s Parkinsons Foundation and others…

Jena is a workaholic who is kept afloat and properly playful by the amazing people who have found their way into her world, and her into theirs.