NEW YORK, NY.- David Richard Gallery is presenting new geometric, color-based, abstract paintings by Heather Jones in her first solo exhibition with the Gallery. The presentation is comprised of 15 new works, all dynamic with hard-edge geometric shapes and patterns that wrap around the sides with high key and contrasting colors that yield a range of optical to trippy compositions and all made of sewn textiles stretched on stretcher bars. While they read as paintings, the artworks are rich with content, rooted in feminist concerns and as the artist stated, honoring “female narratives that are often neglected from history.” They also celebrate and were inspired by sewing and quilt making as well as Jones’s Appalachian heritage. The title of the presentation, To Hold Tender This Land, a line from African American author, activist and feminist from Kentucky, Bell Hooks’ Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place, exemplifies Jones’s commitment to honoring strong and influential women and places that inspire her and her artwork.
This debut exhibition of new work at the Gallery coincides with Jones’s solo exhibition of related and larger paintings at the Contemporary Dayton in Dayton, Ohio that opened earlier in February. Her presentation, Storytellers, is one of three concurrent solo exhibitions of artworks on view by Jones, Odili Donald Odita, and Jeffrey Gibson.
Jones focuses on processes that historically are considered “women’s work”, such as sewing and quilt making. Her paintings are meticulously executed with precision. Jones’s extensive experience and knowledge of textiles and their performance when stretched on stretcher bars creates pristine compositions and surfaces that rival any taped and painted hard-edged paintings with acrylic medium. From a distance, the surfaces read flat, but closer inspection reveals the tight seams, slightly tactile surfaces and sometimes a sheen from the textiles themselves and production processes. However, any perception of spatial depth is due to the vibrant and contrasting colors, not heavily woven fabrics.
While Jones’s methods are traditional, her compositions are contemporary as they reflect current cultural and social issues, the things we see on the news and discuss around the dinner table, which have been a plenty the past decade. Therefore, her patterns and compositions are inspired by and reflect the angst and polarization in politics, as well as cultural and social divides.
Jones is a master at creating balanced compositions using shapes, color and patterns that seem symmetrical at first glance, but upon closer inspection they are not entirely symmetrical. Frequently, the square shapes comprised of adjacent bands of related hues in her compositions are not perfectly and squarely joined in opposing corners, she also uses an array of diamond shapes in a row that create a jagged, tooth-like edge. Both approaches, combined with asymmetrical compositions, layers of patterns, and strongly contrasting colors, creates an internal tension that has a two-fold effect in viewing the paintings. First, such fragmentation of traditional shapes and lines combined with repetition of certain shapes and patterns activates the viewer’s eyes, altering their perception and making them more susceptible to the suggestion and possibility of physical depth and space in an otherwise flat surface. Second, the discord in the composition acts a metaphor for current cultural and political tensions.
Textiles provide a familiar surface and unique entry point into Jones’s work as they are everyday materials familiar to everyone. However, while their application in clothing, bedding and quilting is familiar, as are the artful and decorative prints and patterns, Jones uses solid colors in the paintings with the color and geometric shapes providing the visual and aesthetic impact in the final composition.
Last, Jones’s paintings are mostly about color, it is the first thing a viewer sees and draws them in to view the paintings closely. Jones has a firm understanding of color, both in theory and an intuitive approach to juxtaposing and leveraging color to achieve dynamic aesthetic and compositional effects. More important and relating to her subtle use of formal properties of art (line, color, shapes, composition, surface, etc.) as metaphors for contemporary social and cultural issues, colors are powerful signifiers. Colors are full of meaning on many social, cultural and political levels. They can trigger a wide range of different memories and meanings in each viewer that in turn stir different emotions and responses to each work. Color-based abstractions offer a significant opportunity and multiple points of entry into an artwork as color is very accessible to most viewers and generates a visceral response and reaction. Thus, the opportunity for engagement is very high and often rewarding for a viewer.
While Jones is interested in the traditional methods of working with textiles, their histories, how they are handed down through each generation and how they have influenced and been influenced by feminist concerns, she has stated that she is “interested in exploring the ideas of artist as truth teller and documentarian”. Her current bodies of work on view in two concurrent solo exhibitions in Dayton, Ohio and New York City, clearly demonstrate how she has taken those traditional processes and catapulted them into contemporary politics and cultural discourse.
Heather Jones is an artist who uses abstraction and color to comment on the historical and socio-political relationship between women and textiles, and explores the relationship between gender, place, time, and culture in her work. Her practice continues the story of geometric abstraction inherent to women’s patchwork found in the Southern and Appalachian regions of the US, and her work is steeped in the history of quilt making and a vast group of unknown female makers. The subject of her work is unequivocally feminist: she chooses to work with fabric rather than paint, in reference and reverence to the fact that the fiber arts were often the only type of art that a woman was encouraged to practice for many years throughout history. Conceptually, Jones’ work carries on the tradition of woman as maker, pushes the boundary between fine art and craft, and questions the definition of painting. She documents the story of our current world, particularly the female narratives that are often neglected from history. By working with geometric compositions, Jones creates a universal visual language to tell these stories, using textiles as a reference to issues of domesticity.
Jones was selected as an artist-in-residence for Kehinde Wiley’s inaugural class at Black Rock Senegal, and worked there in October 2019. Her work has been exhibited widely at national and international venues including the Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH (solo); Iowa Quilt Museum, Winterset, IA; New England Quilt Museum, Lowell, MA; University of California, Berkley, CA; Boecker Contemporary, Heidelberg, Germany; drj- dr. julius | ap, Berlin, Germany; Five Walls, Melbourne, Australia; and M17 Contemporary Art Center, Kiev, Ukraine. Jones’ first book, Quilt Local: Finding Inspiration in the Everyday, was released in October 2015 by STC Craft, Abrams, New York.
A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Jones studied art history at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning, earning both a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts (ABT). She currently lives outside of Cincinnati, Ohio on a small farm with her husband and two children.
