Jen Simmons

Jen Simmons is an interaction {web} designer, filmmaker and theatrical projection designer living in New York.

Pushing the possibilities of live performance into the 21st century, Jen has been experimenting for a number of years mixing filmic techniques with the traditions of live theater. In her largest such project, Jen designed and created computer-driven, multi-screen projections for Violet Fire: A Multimedia Opera about Nikola Tesla which premiered at the National Theater of Belgrade, Serbia and traveled to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. Most recently, Jen collaborated with author Sharon Bridgforth to create a gallery installation of Bridgforth’s novel love conjure/blues, mixing live reading of the text with a 90-minute film projected onto three screens. 

Jen wrote, directed and produced two widely-distributed short films, Bush for Peace and Inclinations. They have screened in over a hundred film festivals around the globe, including Resfest, the Media That Matters Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, SXSW, Frameline, OutFest and NewFest, as well as online to several hundred thousand people. 

Jen is the founder and creative director of Milkweed Media Design, creating websites and internet video broadcasting platforms for a wide range of artists, creative businesses and non-profits. She has been a member of the videoblogging community since late 2004, collaborating with other leaders in the field to build tools and techniques, and to shape the vision and culture of this new medium, as television and the internet converge.

For three years, Jen was an Adjunct Professor at Temple University’s Department of Film and Media Arts teaching filmmaking and website development. Her videoblogging class, the first university course on the exploding field of internet video broadcasting, was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Jen also taught web design, digital filmmaking, game development, photography and graphic design at SAY Sí: San Antonio Youth Yes, an intensive after-school program for San Antonio urban teenagers, honored by the President’s Committee on the Arts Coming Up Taller award and selected for the Sundance Institutes’ Reel Studio program. 

From 1992–2000, Jen was deputy director of the Esperanza Center in San Antonio Texas, a community-based, multidisciplinary arts center rooted in movements for social and cultural change. Among her many accomplishments at the Esperanza, Jen oversaw the acquisition, design and renovation of a 10,000 sq. ft. art center, with a 300-seat black-box theater — a facility that was paid-in-full the month before Jen left. Under her tenure, Esperanza’s annual budget grew from $40,000 a year to $500,000, and the staff grew from two to ten people. Jen co-produced over 300 productions, including numerous visual art exhibitions, concerts, book readings, panel discussions, performance art / theater shows, and twelve films festivals. Visiting guest artists and thinkers included Gloria Anzaldúa, Isaac Julien, Lourdes Portillo, Peggy Shaw, Arthur Dong, Cherrie Moraga, Barbara Smith, Elizabeth Martinez, Dolores Huerta, Loretta Ross, Monica Palacios, María Elena Gaitan, Laura Aguilar, Beto Araiza, Carmelita Tropicana, Elia Arce, Sandra Cisneros, Marjorie Agosín, Ntozake Shange, Astrid Hadad, Lilana Wilson-Grez, Suzanne Pharr and Jennifer Harbury. Jen also played a significant role as a Plaintiff in Esperanza v. City of San Antonio, a major federal arts-funding case on the heels of NEA v. Finely that netted a strongly-worded victory for the constitutional rights of diverse artists. 

Jen got her start in theater as a stagehand, carpenter, electrician and stage manager, and soon began designing lighting, scenic and sound. As self-taught graphic designer, Jen has created thousands of posters, postcards, flyers, newsletters, annual reports, bumper stickers and t-shirts.