Jebney Lewis is a sculptor, set designer, community artist, curator, and musician. He works with neighbors, youth, and other artists to re-interpret local sites and histories through the lenses of the visual and performing arts. Past projects have included a vocal requiem for Philadelphia trains performed from a hand-built railway pump-car; a roadside collection of Kuomoni folk sayings gathered with children in the Central Himalayas; an investigation of the Kensington Riots of 1844 with a group of Palestinian immigrant youth; a sonic map of the City of New Orleans that plays field recordings and displays writings of teens on questions of what “home” and “change” mean, and a pandemic web series of performance love letters from New Orleans musicians and poets to the city’s healthcare providers.

His work has been presented at the Big Ears Festival (Knoxville, TN), Creative Alliance of New Orleans, The Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design (New Orleans), A Studio in the Woods (New Orleans), The Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, Temple Contemporary (Phila), VCU’s School of Architecture and Design (Charlottesville, VA), The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education (Phila), The Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts 2013 (Phila), Christ Church Philadelphia (Phila), The Nexus Gallery (Phila), Bumbershoot (Seattle), Stripa Mine (Sweden), Aarohi (India), and various streets, lots, and intersections in a variety of other places.

His projects have have received support from The National Performance Network, The Platforms Fund, Tulane University, Thirdbird,  The Leeway Foundation, the City of Philadelphia’s Percent for Art Program and from the Heritage Initiative of the Pew Center of Arts and Heritage. He holds a BA in theater arts from the University of Washington, and an MFA in sculpture from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University.

Jebney is also an event producer, cultural organizer, and a theater technician and designer. He co-curated a festival of experimental music, sound art and sonic sculpture at the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, called Southern Sonic. Jebney has designed sets for the productions of KindHumanKind (New Orleans), The Mutilated (New Orleans), Chicken (Philadelphia), and Boom Bap Tourism (Philadelphia.) He has worked as Technical Director and/or Facilities manager for the Rivers Institute, Prospect New Orleans, The New Orleans African American Museum, the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, Christ Church Philadelphia, and the Richard Hugo House in Seattle.