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About Seven Sisters and Matriclysm
Seven Sisters was created by Jewel in Toledo, Ohio, in residence at the Toledo Art Museum’s in-house glass studio. Jewel created an original, twelve-minute meditative soundscape to accompany the installation, converting data gathered from NASA and the University of California, Berkeley, from light wavelengths emanating from the constellation into sound. The soundtrack is designed to subtly alter the states of human brain waves, in a technique the artist has termed “neuro-ceutical.”
Accompanying the Seven Sisters are a body of new paintings created by Jewel in her signature realist, surrealism-tinged style, sparking reflection on motherhood and the divine feminine. Paintings include: a portrait of the artist and her son facing one another; a collection of small, gem-like, miniaturist paintings featuring surreal, sometimes discordant images (an egg, a clock, a raven, Henrietta Lacks, Albert Einstein’s wife Mileva Maric, a tarot card, a pill bottle, and more). On another wall hangs four larger paintings, a group of crone-like women, with trees of life sprouting horn-like from their heads, festooned with objects of pop culture and everyday life.
A second gallery focuses on humanity’s connection to nature and features Heart of the Ocean, an eight-foot sculpture that translates real-time oceanic data into a captivating visual and auditory display reflecting the ocean’s ever-changing state. Designed to embody the dynamic relationship between human activity and the sea, Jewel worked closely with leading scientists from NASA, NOAA, Stanford University, and UC Berkeley to record temperature variations, migratory animal patterns, wave activity, salinity, and other indices of oceanographic health. Using both live and historic data together with music algorithms written by Jewel, Heart of the Ocean creates and then “sings” a slowly evolving 12-minute soundscape, lending the sea its own resonant voice, and a surprising, almost creature-like, presence. Accompanying the sculpture is a tapestry of a woman consumed by flames, dressed in corporate garb, serving as a summation of the previous gallery, with many of the keystone symbols and relics gathered in an emergency to-go bag, and a fiery connection to the drama of Heart of the Ocean.
In another gallery, a digital series of four female figures drifts across the sky, hanging by various forms of birth control, referring, perhaps, to both the liberation birth control offers to women but also the disconnection from one’s body – and outright harm – it may cause. The viewer is left to decipher and create meaning from these images through their own experience and interpretation
A culminating piece that serves as a beginning and conclusion to the exhibition is a monumental sculptural work of a pregnant kneeling woman titled First Mother, made in collaboration with Cape Town based Congolese artist Patrick Bongoy. The sculpture references the so-called mitochondrial mother, the single woman to whom the chromosomal threads of all humanity can be traced. It will be outside for the eight months of the exhibition, exposed to sun and rain, its organic elements left to grow, transform, and decay. Working in concert with Jewel, the artists have woven the First Mother’s skin from strands of hessian thread, embedding it with emblems of creation, renewal, and death, symbolizing the path of humanity, particularly mothers.
The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color catalog with an introduction by Susan Magsamen, co-author of Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, as well as an exclusive interview between Jewel, artist Patrick Bongoy, and Nigerian curator Azu Nwagboguand, who played a key role in introducing Jewel to Bongoy and guided their collaboration, and is featured in the catalog.
ABOUT JEWEL
Jewel is a 4x Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, visual artist, actress, New York Times best-selling author, and mental health pioneer. While best-known for her musical talents, Jewel’s passion and training in sculpture, drawing, and painting began long before her songwriting career; as a high schooler, she attended Interlochen Arts Academy. Over the years, she has continued creating, working with paint and clay. In spring 2024, Jewel made her debut in the art world at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art in Bentonville, Arkansas with The Portal: An Art Experience by Jewel, featuring her own painting and sculpture. The exhibition was one of the most visited at the museum in 2024. Throughout her art, Jewel combines her passions for storytelling, experimentation and democratizing mental health.
For the past 21 years, Jewel’s Inspiring Children Foundation and Jewel Inc. have brought specially-designed mental health programs to at-risk youth and to leading corporations. Jewel created SELLA, a language arts curriculum for schools integrating social and emotional learning and mental health practices, and recently co-founded Innerworld, an innovative virtual mental health platform. Jewel’s remarkable journey has taken her from a childhood with no running water on an Alaskan homestead to becoming a multi-platinum recording artist and mental health advocate. She has released 13 studio albums, including her latest release Freewheelin’ Woman, and recently embarked on a national co-headlining tour with Melissa Etheridge. Matriclysm: An Archeology of Connections Lost marks the largest presentation of Jewel’s fine art practice to date.
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