‍ ‍My studio practice focuses on interventions in, and with, nature . . .These actions become my works.

I live on an acre of land just south of Miami, where I talk to the trees, bury my toes in the soil, and tuck small ornaments into organic crevices. These performative acts, are designed with intention, but easily become fluid, changing with the tropical winds.

I’ll use any medium that might best translate a chosen idea or vision: collage, photography, construction, drawing, painting, or moving imagery. While assembling tree branches, capturing scenes for the camera, attaching lace, or filming rolling ocean waves, I'm looking for the place where human opposites can sit together. One evening, at a stoplight off an expressway ramp, I watched a rooster dancing and strutting by. That image became "Nightfall": constructed of buttons, collaged cutouts, drawing, oil paint, resulting in a tapestry of skyline, rooster, and a shadow figure falling from the clouds. Immersing yourself in my installations asks for more than just a walkthrough. Looking at a framed photograph of a body sleeping in the forest hanging across the room from a sculpted, fuzzy, white cloud, do you feel the distance between them, or a strange closeness? It is the closeness of places we’ve experienced that never left us, even when we’ve left them.

My practice is a continuous searching for personal identity, memory, and place, in our cities, our forests, and most often in my own back yard.

When in the studio, I’m sawing, hammering, sewing, beading, or painting. A seed pod, spilling its seeds on the table, sits next to a handful of discarded pink buttons. They get fixed to a length of hand-dyed silk, stretched around a gold-leafed frame sitting in a corner and forgotten for years. Yesterday's birdsong becomes today’s bluebirds nesting on a woman's hairdo painted on a square of rough-edged, torn canvas. They’re join in a new work, a song, or a poem... and somehow, the nature of things becomes a little clearer.

Simmons-Jiménez won, in 1992, one of the prizes of the XVIII Bienal Nacional de Artes Visuales with the first video-art installation ever realized in the Dominican Republic, "A couple of days in the life of Julie Ozama" (1992). . .  plays with her doubled alterity … and codifies a new vision of Nature’s performistic talents. Dr. Alanna Lockward “Towards a Utopian Archeology”

BIO

Alette Simmons-Jiménez (b. 1952, Madison, Wisconsin) received a BFA from Newcomb Memorial College of Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana (1975). The artist began her studio practice in the Dominican Republic and is now based in Miami, Florida

The artist has exhibited extensively in museums, galleries, and media festivals internationally and has collaborated with designers and architects to install large-scale commissions in public and private spaces.  Her latest solo exhibition was presented with site specific works for Oolite Arts Walgreens Windows Projects, Miami Beach (2024).

Other notable solo exhibits have been presented at the Miami International Airport Art in Public places Moving image Gallery (2023), Museum of Arts & Sciences, Daytona Beach (2022); The Miami Design District, Space S|223 with curator Tiffany Chestler (2020); Museum of Modern Art, Santo Domingo (1997); Palm Beach ICA Media Room, curator Michael Rush (2001); Inter-American Development Bank Washington D.C., curator Susana Leval (2000); Oolite Arts Walgreens Windows Projects, Miami Beach (2018); and the Frances Wolfson Gallery at Miami-Dade College (2001), among others.  Notable group shows have been at Centro León, Santiago, Dominican Republic (2024); 21C Hotel Museum, Louisville, KY (2015); US Dept. of State Art in Embassies Program Riyadh, Saudi Arabia & Tegucigalpa, Honduras (2015 & 1999); Boca Raton Museum of Art (2014); Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, (2012); Appleton Museum, Ocala, FL (2010); Casa de la Cultura-Valencia, Spain (2010); MOCA N. Miami (2001); Lowe Museum (2000); Mobile Museum of Art (1999); Musée du Luxembourg, Paris (1989); and numerous others.

Simmons-Jiménez is a recipient of a Miami Individual Artist Grant (2024 & 2023), a prestigious Knight Arts Challenge Grant (2008), a Miami-Dade Tourism Development Grant (2008), a Miami-Dade Community Grant (2008), a Florida State Artists Enhancement Grant (2006), a Florida Fellowship Grant & Honorable Mention (1998 & 1995). The artist has been cited as the first to exhibit video installation art in the Dominican Republic, and received a 1st Prize in Video at the Dominican XVIII Biennial (1992). She is listed among creatives forging the South Florida art community in the publicans “Miami Contemporary Artists” and “100+ Degrees In The Shade: A Survey of South Florida Art”.

The artist received an Oolite Arts Home & Away Grant, and attended the artist residency program at MASS MoCA (2024).  She was invited and attended Résidence D'Artiste Ifitry, Essaouira, Morocco (2019), and was awarded a grant to a seminar/residency at Es Baluard Museum of Contemporary Art, Palma de Mallorca, Spain (2017).  

While the artist continues developing her practice she is also dedicated to community building. From 2004-2011, she founded/directed artist-run collective Artformz Alternative, exhibiting over 150 artists. Simmons-Jiménez also served on the BOD of ArtTable, Inc New York and developed a celebrated mentoring program One X One serving young women in the arts. She held positions of FL Chapter Chair and Programming Director (2013-2016).  Currently the artist hosts and produces Art & Company Podcast, (2018 - present) gaining an international audience, while promoting and documenting the burgeoning South Florida art scene.

No Vacancy MURMURATION, City of Miami Beach 2023