Join me as I make a small watercolor. I start with a drawing of geometric shapes, then I make a watercolor loosely inspired by a landscape. I’ll share my thought process and inspiration with you along the way. I hope you’ll enjoy this meditative process.
See a year’s worth of little watercolor squares I made here.
If you want to learn more about watercolor, I offer an online watercolor course, and you can find it here.
I did something I haven’t done in a while this week. I made a little watercolor square and shot a video of it, showing the process from start to finish. If you’ve been following my work for some time, you might be familiar with my project of making little watercolors every day for a year back in 2016. Making small watercolors has always been a meditative practice for me, so doing this felt like coming home. With all the craziness happening in the world, I felt like sharing this process as a little gift I could give others. I hope it brings you some peace.
If you want to learn more about watercolor, I offer an online watercolor course, and you can find it here.
For the last few months I’ve been experimenting with making watercolor maps of my runs, walks, and bike rides. I keep track of these activities using a GPS, upload the data to Strava (a sort of social network for athletes), and then use the Strava-generated map as the reference for these drawings.
When I started making these, I was including a lot of the data, but after a while I realized that the map part was the most interesting. So I’ve focused on making these smaller – more minimal – drawings since then.
Below you can see the drawings in their current incarnation (the six drawings on the top left) and in their previous forms. The current drawings are 5×7 inches and are watercolor, graphite, colored pencil, ink, and acrylic.
Last October 2024, Brooke Musterman (of the Let’s Talk Art with Brooke podcast) and I had an interesting conversation, and now you can listen to it on her website here or on Apple podcasts here.
Among other things, we talked about whether art school is necessary or not, how to make work about challenging subjects, and my current show at the Sawtooth School in Winston-Salem, NC.
This is a glimpse of the work in my show “Cloud Girl Accidentally Eats Rainbow” currently up at Sawtooth School for Visual Art in Winston-Salem, NC.
The exhibit features video, collage, drawing, textiles, and installation works that explore our relationship to the ephemeral and ever-shifting natural world.
Spurred by climate change and ongoing geopolitical concerns, with this work I’m exploring distinctions of permanence and impermanence, as well as the delicate balance between chaos and order.
The show is up until July 2025 at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art in Winston-Salem, NC.
The installation of my exhibit Cloud Girl Accidentally Eats Rainbow continued this week at the Sawtooth School of Visual Art. We invited community volunteers to help me make boulders, large bundles of textiles that are compressed and tied together. I started making these a couple of years ago while experimenting with reclaimed fabric at Penland School of Craft, and wanted to include more and bigger ones in this show. They sit heavy on the floor in my sculpture work Boulder field.
I’m particularly pleased with this boulder-making experience because last summer I decided I wanted to make more work collaboratively and with community. The two events that the Sawtooth School held brought in people who were genuinely curious about the process, and who were happy to put in the physical effort needed to tightly bundle all of these materials. It was a real pleasure to make these as a group.
Thank you to all the volunteers who came out to help and to our community partners who generously donated the large quantities of scrap fabric needed to make these!
The opening reception is April 17th 6-8pm in the Davis Gallery at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art.
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.
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.
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.
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.