Artist Bio
JD Beltran is a conceptual artist, designer, filmmaker, writer, and educator. Her artistic practice blends the narrative and the abstract in exploring new forms of storytelling. She combines media as diverse as sculpture, film, video, photography, printmaking, painting, interactive software, installation, sound, typography, and literature in conceiving and inventing new ways of storytelling through unexpected means. Her inquiries explore what one might deem “physical semiotics” – how does a portrait of a subject rendered in sculpture create meaning or experience, and how might a photograph represent that subject differently, or even a film of the same subject? For over a decade, her award-winning work has investigated storytelling through the blending of traditional with novel materials, concepts, and technology. One of her primary concepts has been the portal. The “Magic Story Table” series, “Telephone Story,” the hidden “Secrets” project, and the Cinema Snowglobes all probe the concept and experience of looking through a window into another world – be it a foreign culture, a rapturous journey, a strange landscape, or even another person’s psychology.

Her work has been screened and exhibited internationally, including at the Walker Art Center, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The M.H. de Young Museum, The Getty Center, The Kitchen in New York, the MIT Media Lab, Cité des Ondes Vidéo et Art Électronique in Montreal, ProArte in St. Petersburg, Russia. Beltran lives and works in San Francisco.