Nanette Wylde
Nanette Wylde is an American artist and writer known for using digital media early in fine art, and for her work in net.art, electronic literature, and artist books. Her projects are interdisciplinary, conceptual, and often narrative, and she frequently collaborates with other artists. She works in many media, including artist books, digital and electronic work, installations, printmaking, and social practice.
Wylde was born in California and grew up in San Jose. She earned an MFA from Ohio State University in 1996, where she studied interactive multimedia and printmaking. She also holds a BA in Behavioral Science from San Jose State University (1986) and an Associate degree from West Valley College (1981).
Her early influences include Laurie Anderson, Jenny Holzer, Cindy Sherman, Ann Hamilton, Christine Tamblyn, and Rupert Garcia. Wylde is a narrative artist who focuses on storytelling with social and cultural themes, often addressing stereotypes and the reliability of information. Later works add environmental concerns. She frequently includes audience participation, inviting viewers to contribute to the works in meaningful ways. She describes herself as a conceptual artist and a cultural worker, and her electronic works have been shown internationally, noted for their humor.
Collaboration is common in her practice, especially with Kent Manske on projects such as Foodies, Meaning Maker, Preserves, and You are the Tree. Her artist books, which reference or take the form of books, are well known; she published Gray Matter Gardening: how to weed your mind (commissioned by The San Francisco Center for the Book in 2008) under the Hunger Button Books imprint. Her artist books have shown widely, won awards, and are in international collections.
Wylde began using digital tools like Photoshop and Painter in 1991, often combining them with traditional printmaking. She began interactive multimedia work in 1994 at Ohio State University. Her graduate project, A Brief History, was feminist in content and let viewers move images to create their own narratives.
Her net.art and electronic projects often require a computer to experience and frequently involve audience input or data streams. Notable works include Arrested, Belief Manifesto, haikU, and The Daily Planet Interactive (2003), which parodies information delivery and invites two-way reader participation. Storyland is included in the Electronic Literature Collection.
In social practice, her Meaning Maker project offers free pamphlets to engage communities. Wylde has curated exhibitions and produced catalogs and the annual anthology Entanglements. Gregory Flood has praised her collaborative, participatory piece Preserves, describing it as a large-scale work where people write what they want to preserve and attach their notes to a shared board.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 12:50 (CET).