Janene Higgins is a graphic designer

Graphic designer

A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...

 and video artist

Video art

Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...

 based in New York City. Her work spans several genres, from video performance in the experimental music scene to videos for Saks Fifth Avenue

Saks Fifth Avenue

Saks Fifth Avenue is a luxury American specialty store owned and operated by Saks Fifth Avenue Enterprises , a subsidiary of Saks Incorporated. It competes in the high-end specialty store market in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, i.e. 'the 3 B's' Bergdorf, Barneys, Bloomingdale's and Lord & Taylor...

, and the design of several hundred CD packages for such record labels as Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

, BMG

Sony BMG Music Entertainment

Sony BMG Music Entertainment was a recorded music company, which was a 50–50 joint venture between the Sony Corporation of America and Bertelsmann AG...

, PolyGram

PolyGram

PolyGram was the name of the major label recording company started by Philips from as a holding company for its music interests in 1945. In 1999 it was sold to Seagram and merged into Universal Music Group.-Hollandsche Decca Distributie , 1929-1950:...

, and a wide variety of independents.

Higgins moved to New York City in the late 80s to design magazines, working for such publications as Esquire

Esquire (magazine)

Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...

, Working Woman, and Fame, culminating in three years as a designer for Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair (magazine)

Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...

magazine. In the mid-90's, she began designing CD covers and videos for friends in the downtown music scene

Downtown music

Downtown music is a subdivision of American music, closely related to experimental music. The scene the term describes began in 1960, when Yoko Ono—one of the Fluxus artists, at that time still seven years away from meeting John Lennon—opened her loft at 112 Chambers Street to be used...

, which led to an ongoing series of music/video performance collaborations with some of New York's preeminent composers and improvisors of new music. These include duos with Elliott Sharp

Elliott Sharp

Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock,...

, Ikue Mori

Ikue Mori

, also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, composer, and graphic designer.-Biography:Ikue Mori was born and raised in Japan. She says she had little interest in music before hearing punk rock...

, Mari Kimura

Mari Kimura

is a Japanese violinist and composer best known for her use of subharmonics, which, achieved through special bowing techniques, allow pitches below the instrument's normal range...

, Alan Licht

Alan Licht

Alan Licht is an American guitarist and composer, whose work combines elements of pop, noise, free jazz and minimalism. He is also a writer and journalist.-Biography:Licht was born in New Jersey in 1968...

, Nurit Tilles, Okkyung Lee, Aki Onda, and Zeena Parkins

Zeena Parkins

Zeena Parkins is a harpist active in rock music, free improvisation and jazz. Parkins plays standard harps, as well as several custom-made one-of-a kind electric harps; she also plays piano and accordion...

. In addition to video performance, she has directed several short experimental works, often with sound design by notable avant-garde artists including Sharp, Parkins, Christian Marclay

Christian Marclay

Christian Marclay is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer.Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film...

 and John Duncan

John Duncan (artist)

This page is about John Duncan the contemporary artist. For the Symbolist artist see John Duncan .John Duncan is an artist who has lived and worked in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Amsterdam, currently lives and works in Bologna...

. Her work has been performed and exhibited at The New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center; documenta

Documenta

documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...

 in Kassel, Germany; The Kitchen

The Kitchen

The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary art and performance space located at at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...

, NYC; Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon

Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon

The Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon is a museum devoted to the contemporary art, located in the 6th arrondissement of Lyon, in the Cité Internationale, next the cinema, in front of the Parc de la Tête d'Or...

; City of Women festival, Slovenia; The Chelsea Art Museum

Chelsea Art Museum

The Chelsea Art Museum is a contemporary art museum located at 556 West 22nd Street on the corner of Eleventh Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City....

, NYC; HiTeca Festival in Porto, Portugal; Art Institute of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

; Experimenta Festival in Buenos Aires; The Hamburg Short Film Festival; and at The Impakt Festival

Impakt Festival

The Impakt Festival is a year-round grouping of multimedia events for the audiovisual arts founded in 1988 in the city of Utrecht, The Netherlands. It showcases films, video art, performances, music, conferences and other special events for artists mainly from The Netherlands.In 2009 the festival...

 in The Netherlands.

Appearances on Film

• Roulette TV: Janene Higgins & Zeena Parkins
  Zeena Parkins
  Zeena Parkins is a harpist active in rock music, free improvisation and jazz. Parkins plays standard harps, as well as several custom-made one-of-a kind electric harps; she also plays piano and accordion...
  
  . Roulette Intermedium Inc. (2001 DVD)
• Shadows Choose Their Horrors (2005) dir. Jennifer Reeves
• Elliott Sharp: Doing the Don't (2008 DVD documentary)

External links

• Experimental Television Center.
• Official Site.
• The New York Press: "Suspension".