Category: Sculpture

Thank you

Thanks to everyone who made it out to the opening reception for my show “Cloud Girl Accidentally Eats Rainbow” and a big thank you to the entire Sawtooth School for Visual Art team for believing in me and for all the work they put into helping bring this exhibit to life. I’m grateful.
I was delighted to see people excited to take a paper crane and children using them as shadow puppets with my video projections – and gleefully playing on my fabric boulders. The exhibit features 2 large series of works on paper, which I displayed unframed for the first time. That kind of vulnerability was appropriate for the show, and I was happy to be able to share less precious – and touchable! – work in contrast to these.
What’s next? I’m not sure yet, but we have such a rich history of textiles in NC…. I’m dreaming of more and bigger reclaimed fabric boulders – again made in community – and shown in an unused textile factory… If anyone knows of such a place, please let me know!
 

Making Boulders!

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.

Jessica Singerman and volunteer Ann Rowe-Davis working on a textile boulder
Volunteers Russ Dubois, Rebecca Silberman, and Betsy Messick making textile boulders
Artist Jessica Singerman and volunteers Katie Barber, Toni Bryja, and Nicole Cochran working together to make a textile boulder
Tensioning and tying down all the fabric
All hands on deck!
Artist Jessica Singerman and volunteers Katie Barber, Toni Bryja, and Nicole Cochran working together to make a textile boulder
Jessica Singerman and her niece Alex Singerman Driggs celebrating Alex’s boulder-making prowess

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

 

 

 

Encaustic Sculptures Start to Finish

I recently made a series of 6 sculptures using encaustic. Encaustic paint is made by melting wax and damar crystals, and mixing them with pigments for color. Each painted layer then has to be fused to the layers underneath it by liquifying the surface with a propane torch.

The materials I used are: encaustic (wax, pigment, damar resin), cardboard, galvanized steel, and polyvinyl acetate (a fancy way of saying Elmer’s Glue or white glue).

I documented the process from ideation to completion, and you can scroll down to see it from start to finish.

The sculptures are on view and available from the Art Gallery at Congdon Yards in High Point, NC till April 19th.

My sketchbook a couple months ago: the sculpture shape ideas (right) and color combination ideas for sculptures (all over the place). There’s also a drawing for a painting (top left), planning for this exhibit (bottom left), and random ink marks

Drawing a shape on cardboard

Cutting out shapes using an X-acto blade

Cutting and shaping steel wire for the legs and base. The base pieces are also shown

Testing the steel legs and base for balance

Clamping and drying the sculptures. Here the body shape has been attached to steel legs, which has been sandwiched between 2 base plates.

Some of the sculptures after I filled in all the edges with Golden Light Modeling Paste. This way I have a nice smooth, not rough cardboard-y, edge. I sanded and shaped all the edges.

Priming the pieces using R&F Encaustic Gesso for a nice smooth absorbent surface. I sanded the surfaces before and after.

Four of the sculptures primed and ready to go

My encaustic hotplates with melted unmixed colors in the big pots and mixed colors in the lids. The big containers contain clear medium and white.

Six finished encaustic sculptures

In this video you can watch how I fuse the encaustic layer using a propane torch.

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