February Exhibit: 168 Hours

Come check out this incredible show! 

About the show: "In 2013, I began 168 Hours, a long-term embroidered archive of 24 life-size replicas of two of the most popular weekly magazines in the United States, Time and People. This project uses a slow, simple process of recreating a popular cultural image with thousands of tiny cross-stitches. By replacing the pixel with a stitch, I explore the relationship between careful preservation and rapid cycles of information. The selections are not chosen according to content; instead they are topical, cycled every month. Issues released on the same day are exhibited alongside one another to create a broader documentation of our culture and invites viewers to formulate their own perceptions.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, cross-stitch samplers not only taught young American girls basic sewing, but also the alphabet, numbers, and morality through Bible verses and cultural scenes. They literally learned their cultural habits through stitching. In 168 Hours, the stitch replaces the pixel, creating a experience of “learning” our contemporary US culture. The title 168 Hours refers to the hour each magazine spends on the newsstand, which coincidentally estimates the time I spend stitching each cover. These 168 hours are simultaneously short and long."

About the Artist: A Mississippi native, Jennifer Drinkwater is an assistant professor with a joint appointment between the Department of Art and Visual Culture and Iowa State University extension and outreach. She has a B.A. in both studio art and anthropology from Tulane University and earned an M.F.A. in painting from East Carolina University. Her paintings have been exhibited nationally in juried and group shows, and she has had solo exhibitions in venues all over the United States. Her work has been featured in Surface Design Journal, New American Paintings, and Studio Visit magazine. She explores how we bring artwork from the studio into the world, and accordingly, how this work can both build and shape community.

During the past few years, she has partnered with communities in Iowa and Mississippi in various community art projects, programming and theatre productions. She helped to organize a community-wide steamroll printmaking event in Perry, Iowa, created installations in restored prairies in Nebraska, collaborated on public art projects in vacant sites on Iowa main streets, spearheaded a community knit-bombing project, and painted two murals with middle school children on a juke joint in the Mississippi Delta.