Fragmented Realities
within a holistic studio practice
Hello from my last week in Chicago! And a special welcome to my recent followers - finding me even as I’ve been away from my Oregon studio for these past six weeks of summer.
(If you aren’t entirely sure where you’ve landed, feel free to find more about me and my art practice on my website: JenniferLommers.com)
Thank you to everyone for being here and supporting my practice!
I’m excited to be back to share where my art practice is taking me. As many of you know, this summer I decided to commit myself to trying new ideas within an academic setting. At the same time, I continue to pursue existing art projects for upcoming shows and online events (in an attempt to continue funding my existence within an MFA program - so yes, please come if you can and buy my art if it speaks to you!)
As I entered the School of Art Institute Chicago (SAIC) low-residency MFA program, I was thinking of my practice as something existing in two different realms - one commercial (art made for sale), and the other conceptual (and not made for the purpose of selling). In fact, the new work is specifically planned to not exist as physical objects once their essence is captured. It is meant to return to the earth and become a memory of a thing instead of the thing itself.
However, a question was recently posed to me around whether I can consider my art more holistically. What if the tenets around my work exist as a thread that wraps around my entire practice. What would it look like for me to talk about my art in a new singular yet dimensional way? And bonus - maybe I can use this artifact of these thoughts (aka this Substack post) to fulfill my Professional Practices assignment of “Narrating Your Work Digitally.”
Part I - The Fragments
For years, I’ve primarily considered myself a painter (as is evidenced in the following website portfolios).
“…to understand my art practice, I need to see it as it is right now - a love letter to what it means to exist in a moment in time and space.”
But this identity is no longer complete. I work with fiber and paper to sculpt; I document material and relationships through photography and film; I collect vintage items and research history of ephemera and familial relationships; I investigate materiality, memory, and connections to and within a larger biosphere. I not only create layers and patterns with the swipe of a brush, but the pressure of a collagraph plate, the molding of paper pulp and fiber, the mark of charcoal or thread, the edit of a digital pen. I write. I make. I write again. I look back and forward. But to understand my art practice, I need to see it as it is right now - a love letter to what it means to exist in a moment in time and space. To become the thing memory takes and the future aspires to be.
I imagine if I take all the pieces of what was, each found and formed fragment, and bind them together within the folds of fibers made to exist as a gathering place, and hide each image within the foliage and landscape of an earth ready to accept their return, then maybe I will find a way to hold all these thoughts together simultaneously.
Part II - The Threads
Fabric is kneaded like dough with threads stitched, wrapped, and left untethered as a symbol of a heart remembering to beat.
Material and Process
In taking steps to view the entirety of my work as a whole, and less so as individual parts, I imagine how materials and process hold my practice together. “I collect… displaced remnants of human life to shape and inform my art…. Fiber practices provide stability. Rocks and buttons are collected as memories. Bones and pins provide structure. Fabric is kneaded like dough with threads stitched, wrapped, and left untethered as a symbol of a heart remembering to beat.”1
Personal Narrative
I also create through the lens of personal history (learning to sew as a child and embracing fiber practices such as knitting as an adult), generational history (familial traits, traditions, and memories, preserved and forgotten), and mindful practices (walking on the earth with attention and gratitude). Each layer of material serves to remember, accept, and hold space for thoughts and dreams weaving in and out of landscapes and botanical offerings creating a personal narrative around love and loss.
Mindfulness
My art practice often takes on a therapeutic role. I enjoy the tactile nature of paper, fiber, and thread in my hands; the buttery feel of paint on a canvas; the impulse to tear, cut, and glue or sew back together. Finding ways to bend and play with the rules of material feels strangely rewarding and, much like with my knitting practice, brings me into the present moment in the rhythms and rituals of creating. Intentionally displaying unfinished edges, lines of thread, and means of construction provides an interior view of a mind’s machinations and a state of vulnerability - sometimes offered by chance and other times by choice in a grand gesture of transparency to those willing to accept the viewing and share in this mindful practice.
Part III - A Holistic Artist Statement
Which leads me to one final grand gesture - my revised artist statement (in its entirety, below), from which I’ve pulled a few phrases to finish with this short poem.
What is not broken cannot be whole fragmentation...fissures...folds perils of memory...materiality and impermanence a heart remembering to beat uncertain narratives belying trust longing to be captured in lore mark the passing of each day
And in remembrance of the passing of 100 days in 2025 marked with a daily botanical drawing…
I look forward to sharing more summer thoughts and art with you as I prepare for upcoming shows. In the meantime, to many more days of mark making!
~ Jennifer
Artist statement dated 7/19/26
What is not broken cannot be whole. I use fragmentation and pattern to analyze, deconstruct and reimagine material and meaning as fissures and folds within my art practice, exploring delineated and diaphanous moments in time. In the process, I build layers of sedimental bonds confronting the perils of memory and mind. Paintings, drawings, and photography converse with the ephemeral nature of delicate paper castings and fiber constructions. Between these traditional and experimental spaces, I collage intricate worlds reflecting on materiality and impermanence.
My inspirations are rooted in presence. I am grounded by long forest walks and coastal treks, letting these natural environments become conduits to a time continuum beyond my own. The botanical, treescape, and earthen imagery I encounter allow me to drape personal narratives over and within landscapes and bodily forms. I create with intentionality, using natural pigments and repurposed materials. I collect vintage linens, photographs, postcards, maps, and displaced remnants of human life to shape and inform my art. Lace is central to my work, both as a means of reflecting cellular, human, and cosmic patterns and in the history and knowledge it holds - an artifact and tradition passed from one generation to the next. Fiber practices provide stability. Rocks and buttons are collected as memories. Bones and pins provide structure. Fabric is kneaded like dough with threads stitched, wrapped, and left untethered as a symbol of a heart remembering to beat. Vintage home movies and conceptual video combine to process a desire for connection to an unforgiven, unforgiving past and portray a cascade of real and unreal images that preserve a fractional truth within a fictional world. As a granddaughter and daughter of women who suffered and suffer from Alzheimer’s and Dementia, I am attuned to the tenuous relationship between reality and fantasy — memories with origins unknown, consequences denied, and their uncertain narratives belying trust. Fragments of memories become fragments of material. They appear and disappear. Forms are created and disintegrated, returning to the earth to regenerate, no longer able to take human form and returning to the mother tree to become part of a larger universe, longing to be captured in lore.
As my practice enters these ethereal spaces, I use the art’s own history and stories to illuminate the fabric of time, fragmentation of memory, inevitable materiality, and the resiliency that seeks to bind each thread together regardless. It is that persistent human need for connection and placement within a larger existential construct that underscores my continual desire to create. Throughout my practice, my focus is on the dichotomy of fragility and strength within systems both human and ecological, offering uncertainty as beauty within a world required to turn toward both the light and dark to mark the passing of each day.
You work is gorgeous in its layered, colorful intricacies. Kudos on creating an Artist Statement that I enjoyed reading.
Beautiful!!! So glad you are getting so much out of your program!