Jennifer Rife

Jennifer Rife has resided in Cheyenne, Wyoming for more than 20 years after growing up in rural
Colorado, establishing the high prairies of the American West as the place she calls home.
Exploring a variety of geographies on road trips across the U.S. and Canada has enhanced her love
and appreciation of the West’s wide-open spaces, sparse population, and vast skies. The built
environment she has seen along the way provides endless references for her ephemeral art
installations on the land, created with objects she makes in her studio.
Viewers experience Jennifer’s installations as digital photographs of unfamiliar objects in remote
landscapes. As records of a moment in time, her images also raise questions that are difficult for
a viewer to answer. What are the objects? Why are they there? Through her practice, she considers
how humans interact with our land: what we take, what we leave, and to what end.

Jennifer was one of five Wyoming women artists curated for consideration in 2024’s Women to Watch:
New Worlds at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. She has exhibited her
work throughout the United States after earning her BFA with Highest Distinction at the University
of Kansas, has had her work featured in books and articles, and received a Wyoming Arts Council
Visual Arts Fellowship.

An avid visitor of museums and land art sites, Jennifer finds ideas in a
variety of art forms, mostly in work that transcends time and
place.