Jenny Hart was born in 1972 in Iowa City and raised in rural Illinois. She is best known for her work in hand embroidery and her design and supply company Sublime Stitching (founded 2001). Hart’s work has been published in numerous books, the subject of cultural surveys, and featured in magazines including Vogue, NYLON, Spin, The Face, Juxtapoz, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, the cover of The Washington Post Magazine, and more. At 20 years old, Hart was listed in Art in America’s 1992 annual gallery guide -a national index of professionally represented artists. She has participated in group and solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Paris, London, Tokyo and New York.
Hart is also a PRINT award-winning author/designer of seven titles on embroidery for Chronicle Books. She has undertaken commercial projects and creative collaborations for clients including Penguin Books (UK), ESPN, MTV, Converse, Citizens of Humanity, Restoration Hardware, Free People, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, LAIKA and others.
In 2015 Jenny was commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art to interpret patterns from the Met's textile archives to accompany the exhibition Fashion and Virtue. The resulting designs were made available to the public as iron-on transfers to embroider themselves. Additional educational programs include special projects with The Fowler Museum of Art at UCLA, The Henry Ford Museum, Machine Project and more.
Jenny’s work is held in multiple public and private archives, notably the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Renwick) and the holdings of numerous celebrities: Maya Rudolph, Tracey Ullman, Richard Simmons, Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher and the estate of Elizabeth Taylor. Her work has been included in curated exhibitions alongside John Baldessari, Laura Owens, and Alighiero Boetti.
Prior to being a full-time freelance artist and designer, Jenny worked as a museum exhibition installation assistant and preparator of works on paper specializing in Northern Italian Renaissance prints and drawings from 1996-2003 (Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas). She is also a multi-instrumentalist and former founding member of the Lawrence, Kansas and Austin, Texas-based bands The Playthings and The Hidden Persuaders. For five years (1999-2003) she was a backing musician and duet singer at SXSW with cult performer Harvey Sid Fisher.
The daughter of a Nebraska farmer turned industrial / educational filmmaker (Centron Films, John Deere Television), Jenny was exposed to and encouraged to explore photography and film from a young age. Hart has worked on and appeared in independent and major films (Miss Congeniality, Bix: Interpretation of a Legend) and music videos (Biffy Clyro, The Flaming Lips) variously as stand-in, script girl, speaking actress, and costume designer. During the mid-2000s, she made appearances on national and international television as an embroidery designer and author (She’s Crafty with Wendy Russell, Craftcorner Deathmatch with Jason Jones and Eartha Kitt) and was a featured guest on Martha Stewart Radio. From 1994-1995 she was a working atelier and runway model in Paris (while also a nanny). She has been a keynote speaker at many events including Maker Faire, Craftcation, and Etsy’s European launch hosted by The Smithsonian at The National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.
Hart’s more than decade-long handwritten correspondence with the late Canadian writer Crad Kilodney is archived at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, and will be made available to the public after her death.
Jenny (Suzanne) Hart is her real, full name. After a combined twenty-five years living in Austin and Los Angeles, and surviving the California wildfires of 2025, she moved back to the midwest at the edge of the Mississippi River Valley where she continues to play music and run Sublime Stitching.