Jill Downen's art is a focused investigation of the symbiotic relationship between the human body and architecture expressed in temporal installations, drawings, and models.  Her art envisions a place of interdependent relation between the human body and architecture, where the exchanging forces and tensions of construction, deterioration, and restoration emerge as thematic possibilities.
    
Significant awards include a 2009 MacDowell Colony National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship with additional support from Leon Levy Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.  In 2007, she was awarded a Cité International des Arts Residency, Paris, France where she  first exhibited "Hybrida" an ongoing series of works on paper.  Downen was selected for the 2004 Great Rivers Biennial, a grant and exhibition sponsored by Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Gateway Foundation.  Downen has been invited to lecture about her work extensively, including the 2007 Luce Irigaray Circle Conference on philosophy in New York.  In addition, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis has invited her participation in symposiums on modern and contemporary art.

Downen is represented by the Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis, where she maintains her studio.  She holds a BFA  from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA as a Danforth Scholar from Washington University.  Since the completion of an appointment at Washington University as the Wallace Herndon-Smith Distinguished Visiting Assistant Professor in 2008, Downen has pursued art practice full-time.