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Making Clouds and Suspending Hankies

The installation of my upcoming exhibit Cloud Girl Accidentally Eats Rainbow started this week. The first two days were focused on installing Children of the Clouds, the suspended textile work featuring 200 individually dyed handkerchiefs. You can read more about this project here and here.

If you’re interested in behind the scenes, here are some photos documenting the process. I roughly calculated that I went up and down that ladder 500 times in the 8 hours of work to tie and hang all of the hankies. Thankfully I had two assistants doing all of the thread measuring and tying knots to tiny safety pins.

Installation continues this week and next for the rest of the work in the show.

The opening reception is April 17th 6-8pm in the Davis Gallery at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art.

up in the clouds
almost done!
Artist Assistants Finley Billstone and Lex Piper
200 hankies ready to be installed
200 hankies waiting for their place
my concept drawing for the installation – the plan for the whole exhibit is on the right

 

 

 

Sawtooth presents new solo exhibition by acclaimed Winston-Salem artist Jessica Singerman

Cloud Girl Accidentally Eats Rainbow features video, collage, drawing, and textile installation works that explore our relationship to the ephemeral and ever-shifting natural world.

(MARCH 18, 2025 – WINSTON-SALEM, NC) Sawtooth School for Visual Art is proud to present a new solo exhibition by award-winning Winston-Salem-based artist Jessica Singerman. Cloud Girl Accidentally Eats Rainbow features video, collage, drawing, and textile installation works that explore our relationship to the ephemeral and ever-shifting natural world. The exhibition will be on view from Monday, April 21, through Saturday, July 12, 2025, with an opening reception on Thursday, April 17, from 6-8 pm. (Sawtooth will be closed Friday, April 18, through Sunday, April 20, for Easter weekend.)

There will also be complementary hands-on workshops with the artist on Tuesday, April 8, and Wednesday, April 9, to create fabric boulders for the exhibition. These workshops are open to all and offered free of charge, courtesy of Sawtooth and supporting community partners. More information is below.

About the Exhibition
Through textiles, drawing, video, and collage, Cloud Girl Accidentally Eats Rainbow explores distinctions of permanence and impermanence, as well as the delicate balance between chaos and order. Known for abstract paintings that reference the landscape, Cloud Girl marks a departure from Singerman’s usual ways of working, a new direction that evolved from ongoing contemplation, play, and concern.

Singerman’s work exists in tension, incorporating elements both light and heavy, ephemeral and enduring. In the central installation, soft shapes and naturally dyed fabric will suspend from the ceiling, reminiscent of laundry on a line or flags in the wind, while tightly bundled masses, or “boulders,” will sit heavy on the ground. With recent climate disasters spurring reflection and introspection, Singerman’s work reflects on textile’s roles in our ecosystem. “On a large scale,” she says, “it’s an industry of extraction and exploitation. Yet on a small scale, it can be one of care, craft, and resistance.”

Singerman’s video work examines technology’s pervasiveness and social media’s impact on our outdoor experiences. The artist asks viewers to consider: How can we enjoy nature unmediated when social media’s filtered images dominate our view, driven by profit? What are the
consequences of prioritizing performance for strangers over personal growth? Other drawings, collages, and ephemeral installations by the artist reflect the same concerns.

“My connection to the land is both personal and professional,” said Singerman. “As an outdoor athlete and as a former guide leading people across continents by bike and foot, I have seen firsthand how landscapes shape us and how we, in turn, alter them.”

“As a painter, my work is motivated by the outdoor experience. Because painting is inherently a two–dimensional experience, this exhibition–with installations, sculptures, and more–offer a way to create a more immersive and interconnected experience for viewers.”

Singerman has also documented her processes in crafting this exhibition on her website, at
https://jessicasingerman.com/blog/

Hands-On Experiences
Before the exhibition, Sawtooth will host complimentary workshops where participants can create art and learn fiber techniques. Singerman will guide all ages in binding scrap fabric into colorful sculptures called “boulders.” The event fosters community making, conversations with the artist, and reflections on fabric waste. Community-created pieces will be displayed in the exhibition, with all participants acknowledged. Registration required; details below.

Interactive elements are also included in the exhibition itself, including an installation of hand- folded paper cranes that visitors are invited to take with them. “I hope visitors take this memento from the exhibition to reflect on their appreciation of the environment and their role in preserving it,” said Jessica Singerman.

Exhibition Details
Jessica Singerman
Cloud Girl Accidentally Eats Rainbow

Eleanor and Egbert Davis Gallery
Sawtooth School for Visual Art
251 N. Spruce St., Winston-Salem, NC 27101

April 21 – July 12, 2025
Opening Reception: April 17, 6 – 8pm

Hands-On Activities
Both events are free and open to the public. Registration is requested.

Community Boulder Making with Jessica Singerman
Tuesday, April 8 • 7–9 pm
Register here
During the free drop-in event, Singerman will guide participants in a process of binding
scrap fabric to make sculptures she calls “boulders.” These pieces, made with the help of
the community, will be on display during the exhibition April 21 – July 12. All participants will be recognized for their contribution in the exhibition text.

Community Boulder Making with Jessica Singerman
Wednesday, April 9 • 10 am–12 pm
Register here
During the free drop-in event, Singerman will guide participants in a process of binding scrap fabric to make sculptures she calls “boulders.” These pieces, made with the help of the community, will be on display during the exhibition April 21 – July 12. All participants will be recognized for their contribution in the exhibition text.

About Jessica Singerman
Born in Bangor, Maine in 1980, Jessica Singerman lived alternatively in France and the United States during her early life. Singerman earned her BA magna cum laude with Highest Honors in 2002 from the College of William & Mary, Virginia, and her Masters of Fine Arts in 2004 from the University of Delaware while on a fellowship. Her watercolors are the subject of a book published in 2017, Little Watercolor Squares, and her award- winning paintings and drawings are exhibited and collected internationally.

In previous lives, Singerman taught yoga and worked as a guide leading epic bicycle tours all over Europe, Central America, and Australia. She rides bikes, runs, and climbs, and lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with her husband and their son.

New Painting Acquisitions

I’m happy to share that Linea South End luxury apartments has acquired four of my paintings (below) for their thoughtfully curated project in Charlotte, NC. Thanks to their team and to Sugarlift for the collaboration.

Artistic Lineage

After last week’s “snowmageddon,” today’s downright balmy weather feels like a gift. Sitting on my back porch in the warm sun, I’m looking at the shapes between the trees and the sky and the ground.

I made a series of paintings based on drawings of chairs and a table and trees I drew on this back porch when I was imagining creating spaces for conversation… I was inspired by a painting of a chair that Richard Diebenkorn made years ago, and he in turn was inspired by an Henri Matisse painting. This makes them my art grandpas if you will. I like thinking of the line of artists who inspire younger artists – this artistic lineage is reassuring in a way.

Scroll down to see one of the paintings from this series, and then the Diebenkorn and Matisse works below it.

Petals fall in the pond 2, oil on panel, 14×11 inches
Richard Diebenkorn, Interior with Doorway, 1962, oil on on canvas, 70 3/8 x 59 1/2 in
Henri Matisse, View of Notre Dame, 1914, oil on canvas

Drawing Maps and Plastic Bags

I’ve always had a thing for maps – trail maps in particular. They are full of possibilities and tiny meticulously drawn details. The hand-drawn maps of imaginary worlds in Tolkien’s The Hobbit were some of my favorites when I was a kid.

To this day, I still prefer to carry with me a printed map when I go backpacking or when I’m exploring a new route that has many connecting trails and chances for getting lost. In more tricky spots, I frequently have the chance to share a map with other hikers who are unsure of where they are or where to go, and to help them find their way. Even folks using mapping apps will often take a picture of my paper map to guide them.

For a few years I’ve been making drawings and paintings of crumpled paper and plastic bags, and while I could tell something interesting was going on, I couldn’t figure out what direction to take them. Recently while following a thread of ideas, I started making imaginary topographical drawings/trail maps using plastic bags as a reference for the land. Now I’m making a series of them for a solo exhibit in the spring.

Here’s a look at my sketchbook showing the progression of drawings I made to figure out how to make it work (that link goes to Instagram by the way) along with images of other drawings I made along the way.

Also if you’re in or near Winston-Salem, you can see some of my work, including my painting Of Stones and Earth and Air at The Gallery at Stimmel. The work there is available through Artfolios.

The drawing of paper that started it all almost 10 years ago.
a drawing of plastic bags
Cold Water, oil on canvas, 30×40 inches The big thing in the foreground is actually crumpled up paper.

Getting Unstuck, Sustaining Your Art Practice in the New Year and Beyond

This Wednesday January 15th, I’m giving a talk as part of Artists’ Network‘s Professional Development Seminar series. During this session, we’ll focus on getting unstuck and building or reigniting a daily art-making practice for the year ahead.

You’ll learn how to carve out time for your art, stay inspired when life gets busy, spark new ideas, and adapt your workspace—whether you’re traveling or working without a dedicated studio.

If you’re ready to embrace your creative goals and make 2025 your most artistic year yet, this workshop is for you!

Meet us January 15th, 2025 6:30PM on Zoom.

Free for Artists’ Network members or $25

You can register HERE.

 

Happy New Year and Studio Goings On

Happy New Year! I just got back from a walk with my kitten Luna in a cat backpack. Yes, I am now that person who walks their cat in the neighborhood.

I’ve been on winter break and I’ve got a few days ’til the start of spring semester in the School of Film at UNCSA. It’s been nice to have the time and mental bandwidth to retool the classes I’m teaching and to work in the studio, where I’ve got several projects going on.

As we speak, I’m soaking River Birch bark (foraged with a friend) to extract some color and dye the last few hankies I kept aside. You may notice an open container of gesso, a sort of acrylic primer to prepare a birch wood panel for a painting. To get the surface ready to paint on, I applied four thin coats of gesso, sanding in between each one to make a bright white, opaque, smooth surface to work on. I’m looking forward to making this painting. It was commissioned at the end of the year by North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) Winston-Salem, specifically for the Hanes House.

In the last image, you’ll see a screenshot of an in-progress edit of a video piece I’m working on for my upcoming show in the spring. Some of my students were kind enough to help me out for this project and let me shoot their hands while they made an ink drawing of a landscape in Todd, a small community outside of Boone, NC, that saw a lot of damage during Hurricane Helene.

The previous two images are of ink drawing experiments I’m doing to figure out a series of works hopefully for the spring show. In the last few years I’ve made some drawings and paintings of plastic bags and crumpled up paper, but nothing I really dug into. Now I’m making drawings of plastic bags again, this time imagining a large group of them hanging together in a series as sort of imaginary topographies. We’ll see where it goes.

On Color Transformation

For the last couple of months, I’ve been dyeing hundreds of handkerchiefs using natural dyes as I work on a project for a show in the spring. So far I have successfully worked with madder, weld, cochineal, pomegranate, myrobalan, cutch, various parts of the oak tree, walnut, and indigo.

I waited to work with indigo till I had some experience under my belt. It’s a trickier dye to work with than others because it’s insoluble in water and has to be reduced to a water-soluble form. To make an indigo vat, you have to follow steps to create the chemical reactions needed for the indigo to convert to a dye rather than a pigment.

To make the indigo vat, you have to create an alkaline environment in the vat (adding lye or soda ash to the water for example), remove the oxygen (adding thiourea dioxide in my case), add the indigo “starter” you made earlier, check the pH, adjust the pH to the correct one for the fiber you’re dyeing, then you can start. You then adjust the vat as needed each work session, adding the necessary ingredients for each chemical change to occur.

Other colors are much easier to work with and just involve steeping dyestuff for hours or days.

What’s been so exciting about working with indigo the last 2 weeks is that I’ve added a whole side of the color spectrum to my handkerchief palette. I’ve been able to overdye reds and yellows to make a range of turquoise, greens, violets, and lavenders. If you look at the images below, you’ll notice that some of the handkerchiefs are much darker than others. This involves dipping the hankies multiple times in the indigo, anywhere from 5 seconds to 5 minutes at a time. And the magic of indigo is that when you take fabric out of the vat, it comes out yellow or green and only turns blue in contact with air. It oxidizes over the course of the next 30 minutes to reach its peak blueness. You can then dip it in the vat again to make it darker and bluer.

Working with the Indigo Vat
Giving fabric time to soak in the indigo vat.

Indigo overdyed on Myrobalan
A range of colors using indigo alone and overdyed on myrobalan and weld.

Indigo overdyed on Pomegranate and Weld
A range of colors using indigo overdyed on pomegranate and weld.

Indigo overdyed on Cochineal
A range of colors using indigo overdyed on cochineal and matter.

My Mission Meets Another Artist’s Vision

This week has been different for me. I’ve been working on a mural assisting another artist to bring her vision to life.

I’ve been wanting to do more in the public art realm for a while. It’s important to me that art be in the world so everyone can have it in their lives, but while I’ve applied to calls for public art for years, I’ve had very little success. So when the opportunity came up to help Georgie Nakima @gardenofjourney, I jumped at it, and let her know that I’m an experienced painter and that I know how to operate a boom lift. So this week, between teaching classes, I’ve been working on one of Georgie’s murals with a team of artists, and I’m happy to be able to fulfill my goal to bring art out into the community.

This is the last week to help me raise funds so that I can donate to recovery efforts in Western NC. I am donating 50% of all sales in October to help out disaster relief efforts in the Appalachians. Find available work here.

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