Jennifer Torres was born in Queens, NYC, studied at the Art Students League and then earned her BFA at the Cooper Union, also in NYC. Her focus was steel fabrication, casting, woodworking, and photography. After graduating from Cooper she trained as a fine cabinetmaker in New England, and then later earned her MFA in Sculpture at the University of Georgia in Athens. Ms. Torres has lived in Hattiesburg, MS for 22 years where she has her studio and teaches sculpture as a tenured professor at The University of Southern Mississippi. She has had many exhibits of her sculptures and installations around the country and has won a number of awards and commissions. Ms. Torres received a highly competitive 2020 MS Visual Arts Fellowship and was chosen as Creative Researcher of the Year at USM’s College of Arts and Letters. Recently she finished a large commission of her Garden Boats, located at Osage Park, in Bentonville, Arkansas. In 2022 she was awarded the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Visual Arts for her project, Garden Boats for Osage Park, in Bentonville, AR.