JORDAN SEEBERRY is a painter, organizer, legislative advocate, and educator. He was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago and then moved to Providence to attend the Rhode Island School of Design. After receiving his BFA degree in 2014, he earned a second degree in 2015 from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME, and in 2020, he received an MSL from Roger Williams University School of Law, Bristol, RI. This education and experience, both in art and law, led him to become a remarkable artist who speaks through art and civic action.
Alongside his art, he built a career as a grassroots organizer, helping to fight and pass multiple criminal justice reform milestones, including Probation Reform and the Unshackling Pregnant Prisoners Bill, and laying the groundwork for the “Ban the Box” movement in Rhode Island.
In fact, Jordan says he makes paintings and policies equally as an artist and organizer. He has a painting studio in Providence and has displayed works at institutions such as the RISD Museum, the deCordova Museum, the Crystal Bridges Museum, and exhibition spaces in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. He also states that ‘each painting’s meaning is found within the lifetime of its creation, on the canvas itself. They move as social movements do: evolving in real-time, bound by the edges of the canvas, but free to grow within those bumpers’.
Jordan serves as Co-Director of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, and most recently worked as the Director of Public Policy at the Nonviolence Institute. He serves as Chairman of the Providence Board of Canvassers, overseeing the city’s elections; Board Member at New Urban Arts in Providence, and as a Board Member for Protect Families First, working on community-oriented drug policy reform. He has received fellowships from the Art Matters Foundation and the Rhode Island Foundation and recently served as a Community Leader Fellow at Roger Williams University School of Law.
More of his work may be enjoyed on his website and IG account.
