The singer-songwriter says her second major exhibition, Matriclysm, is a meditation on femininity and memory.

In a rugged childhood under the cold Alaska sky, Jewel Kilcher grew up around six aunts who modeled for her the sort of wide-ranging physical skill sets that would allow one to survive in the wilderness while also nurturing a vibrant creative life. &ldquo;They could all fell their own trees and shoe their own horses,&rdquo; says the mononymous musician and, in a more recent turn, visual artist. &ldquo;They could draw, paint, sculpt, write songs, and play multiple instruments,&rdquo; she adds, recalling one aunt in particular who could sculpt from alabaster.
As Jewel, now 52, assimilated these forms of self-expression, she handled grueling labor across her family&rsquo;s ranch. Tasks from changing a tire to pulling weeds to making preserves became second nature well before adulthood. When she ventured south beyond the family&rsquo;s homestead at just 15 years old, she was shaken to discover a world where women hadn&rsquo;t been brought up to take care of themselves. &ldquo;[Growing up], everybody around me was depending on me and expecting me to get things done, and that was a tremendous advantage when I came down to the States, where that wasn&rsquo;t actually the norm,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;I am capable of figuring out complicated problems. I&rsquo;m not a fragile thing.&rdquo;

For Jewel, indeed, femininity is as powerful and protective as it is sentimental and spiritual. The raw, ancient truth of womanhood, and the cultural memory attached to it, is the thematic core of her solo presentation, Matriclysm: An Archeology of Connections Lost, which opens alongside the Venice Biennale at the art and social club Salone Verde, produced with support from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Designed as an immersive experience,&nbsp;Matriclysm&mdash;a combination of the words &ldquo;matriarchy&rdquo; and &ldquo;cataclysm&rdquo;&mdash;explores the feminine as a mystical lineage fundamental to what makes us human. &ldquo;To me, the feminine urge is the urge to nurture. It isn&rsquo;t something that just lives in women,&rdquo; says Jewel. &ldquo;But when we cut off our relationship with the feminine principle, we&rsquo;re cutting off nourishment and connection&mdash;to ourselves, our community, the planet. What ails the world is this alienation.&rdquo;

Much as Jewel&mdash;the singer-songwriter&mdash;has straddled folk, country, pop, and dance over her more than three-decade music career, Jewel&mdash;the visual artist&mdash;has naturally embraced a range of mediums to convey her message: Matriclysm spans painting, sculpture, tapestry, and installation, and incorporates original soundscapes. The exhibition opens in a dark room illuminated by &ldquo;Seven Sisters,&rdquo; consisting of seven glass orbs hand-blown by Jewel as an artist-in-residence at the Toledo Art Museum, and accompanied by a 12-minute soundscape.
The subject alludes to the Pleiades constellation and the associated myth of the seven sisters; with a 17,000-year history, it&rsquo;s thought to be the oldest tale passed down through oral tradition. &ldquo;When I was thinking of what medium I could use to tell this story, it had to be glass. Primordial, with mystery and an allure, and able to emit light,&rdquo; says Jewel. The second major artwork is &ldquo;Heart of the Ocean,&rdquo; an eight-foot-tall resin sculpture consisting of intertwining, glowing blue tentacles that generates ethereal sounds based on real-time data collected by NASA from the Atlantic Ocean (e.g. wave height, precipitation, salinity, and seismicity). The artist also separately worked with researchers to establish that the cumulative sensory effect of the work induces in viewers theta brainwaves, necessary for the deep relaxation state of meditation and creativity. Among the paintings on view will be four from her Ceremony series depicting post-menopausal women&mdash;&ldquo;amalgamations of women in my family,&rdquo; adds Jewel&mdash;their hair attached to symbols pointing to their pasts and futures. A final note in the show takes the form of a tapestry depicting a woman donning a corporate pantsuit engulfed in flames.

Years before she rocketed to fame with her 12-time platinum album debut in the mid-1990s, Jewel had studied drawing and sculpture, in clay and marble, at the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy in northern Michigan. (She&rsquo;d also unknowingly aligned with an illustrious lineage of artists who&rsquo;d destroyed their own artwork in their youths, including John Baldessari and Georgia O&rsquo;Keeffe, when she committed to jettisoning anything she made that couldn&rsquo;t fit in her backpack.) In spring 2024, at the Crystal Bridges Museum, Jewel made a public return to visual art with &ldquo;The Portal: An Art Experience by Jewel,&rdquo; an all-encompassing installation combining sound and visuals to create a meditative environment. The intention to engender a calm, centered mental state in viewers ultimately became more focused and evidence-driven in the making of &ldquo;Heart of the Ocean.&rdquo; Jewel has even coined the term neuro-ceutical to describe artworks that &ldquo;affect the nervous system, [through] music, sound, and lights,&rdquo; she says.

The broader concept of a space consciously devised to have a beneficial effect on one&rsquo;s psychological state ties in with Jewel&rsquo;s third lifelong interest, after music and art, of mental health. For the artist, taking care of her inner life has been foundational to how she relates to the world. Performing alongside her folk-singer father in bars from the age of 8 led her to early epiphanies about the human condition. &ldquo;I noticed everybody was in pain, and I saw people dealing with it with PCP or sex or rage or alcohol. And nobody won, nobody outran pain,&rdquo; she says. As her own household became more abusive, she realized that the odds were against her. Still, determined to transcend her circumstances, she became deeply reflective, turning to writing to sort through her emotions and avoid succumbing to darker impulses. This was decades before people would casually bring up lessons gleaned from therapy over workday coffee. &ldquo;I had heard about the buffalo being the only animal that goes directly into a storm, because the quickest way is through,&rdquo; says Jewel. &ldquo;That hit me so hard. So I made a promise to myself to try and move toward the pain. And really thinking, is happiness a learnable skill?&rdquo;
She admits that the first song she wrote, which arguably remains her best known, is fundamentally posing its titular question to herself. &ldquo;In &lsquo;Who Will Save Your Soul?&rsquo; you can see what I was grappling with,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Am I responsible for myself and my happiness? Who will save me if I don&rsquo;t? What is this culture teaching me?&rdquo;
Which begs the question: Has she gotten any closer to the answer&mdash;and to what extent is that answer, perhaps, the free, honest expression of creativity? &ldquo;The song was trying to get at being accountable in my own life, to my happiness,&rdquo; Jewel says. &ldquo;In my songs, I try to ask questions, and I try to never answer them. So that people can ask those questions for themselves, and I trust them to answer.&rdquo; But yes, she continues, there&rsquo;s no doubt that art and creativity have been indispensable on her own journey, spiritually, physically, and emotionally.

Jewel Is Still Trying to Make Sense of the World

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