Over 30 years as an active artist, Janet has shown her work in over 20 solo exhibitions, and nearly 100 group exhibitions throughout the US, as well as in Lithuania, Germany, Italy, Bosnia, Australia, New Zealand, and Mali.
Highlights include The Global Africa Project at the Museum of Arts and Design (2010-11) and Women Facing AIDS at the New Museum (1989) as well as Have We Met?, a major installation at Colgate University ( 2007). My wall installation, Negelan is in the permanent collection of the American Embassy in Mali. Permanent public sculptures include Most of Us Are immigrants at the Islip Museum on Long island and Granary in the city of Segou, Mali in collaboration with Segou artists.
She is the recipient of numerous awards, grants, and artist residencies, including a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship to Mali in 1994-5 and a grant from the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid. She is currently a Fulbright Senior Specialist.
An artist-scholar, she has curated exhibitions, published articles and catalogs, and lectured at conferences, universities, and community venues. Recently published is her chapter in Contemporary African Fashion published by Indiana University Press and an essay published in Poetics of Cloth, the catalog for the exhibition of the same name shown at NYU.
She received a BA from Antioch College and an MA from NYU. She took taken Arlen Raven’s writing workshop, participated in Forum ’85, the UN Women’s Conference in Kenya and interned with Nancy Graves.