Scrolling through the photos on her iPhone in search of inspiration, textile artist Jessica Pinsky kept finding inexplicable images of what appeared to be blurry globules.
“I’m like, ‘What is this?’” she said. “I see it again and again. I don’t remember taking this picture. I don’t know what this is!”
The mystery was soon solved. Her children, just one year old at the time, had gotten hold of her phone and kept pressing the button. The images were close-ups of the carpet.
And these turned out to be the inspiration Pinsky had been seeking.
“I was like: That’s kind of beautiful; I could weave that,” she said.
Using Adobe Photoshop, she combined the photos with drawings made by the children. Then, using a digital Jacquard loom, she created large, woven reproductions of the images. Several of these creations — part of a series Pinsky calls “I Can’t Remember Anything” — have been on display since May 21 at the First Coast Cultural Center; they are part of a broader exhibition of textile works by the artist.
Originally from Akron, Ohio, where she learned as a child to love art by way of visits to a local museum, Pinsky went on to earn a master’s degree in painting. But she wasn’t happy working in that medium.
“Halfway through grad school, I started cutting up all my paintings and sewing them back together,” she said. “I loved sewing, and I thought: How can I make my work more sewing and less painting?”
That’s when weaving, with its complex intersections of yarn, caught her attention.
“I got my first loom right after grad school and fell madly in love with it and never looked back,” she said.
And, for the past 15 years, she’s been creating her artwork on a floor loom.
Speaking to gallery visitors during an opening reception for her local show, Pinsky contrasted painting and weaving.
“When you’re making a painting, you’re making a micro-decision every second,” she said. “Every brush stroke, every moment, you’re deciding something. Weaving is the opposite. You make lots and lots of decisions, and then you execute them.”
Today, Pinsky runs a gallery in Cleveland, where she also has a nonprofit community textile organization, Praxis Fiber Workshop. Also an adjunct professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art, she exhibits her work around the country.
She describes her work as “personal and narrative” and “very abstract.”
“They’re actually about issues that tend to be really hard to talk about, like difficulty getting pregnant, the crazy time that women have navigating early motherhood and stuff like that,” she said. “I think, just traditionally, women are told that lots of those topics are very taboo, and so it’s nice to be able to talk about them through art.”
She admitted that those viewing her art would not necessarily perceive the works’ background, but each piece is clearly expressive. If the details are obscured, the power behind the woven image is easily felt and appreciated.
Despite her adeptness with her medium, Pinsky said she received no formal weaving training.
“I taught myself out of the Deborah Chandler ‘Learning to Weave’ book,” she told the assembly during the exhibit’s opening reception, earning her an affinity with the other weavers in the room, several of whom recalled their own experience with the guide. “It’s the best book to teach yourself how to weave.”
Being self-taught, Pinsky did not learn any of the prevailing “rules,” and found herself unencumbered by them. The result may contribute to an “unexpected” quality in her work.
Among the pieces on exhibit at the First Coast Cultural Center are several smaller weavings she did in a series, each measuring about 10-by-10 inches. These were created over a three-month period within a set of self-imposed limitations, or parameters.
“I kept the color palette very neutral, and I tried to make the most contrast or do different things within this strict parameter,” Pinsky said. “And it was awesome. I took them off the loom, I looked at them and it was like a diary of my life of those three months, when I was trying to get pregnant for the first time.”
Also on exhibit are examples of her large black-and-white weavings, all of which she had only a week to create. To accomplish this, she eschewed color and held to the same material.
Gallery visitors will find that Pinsky doesn’t only weave images; she also creates a three-dimensional effect by causing some portions of her work to droop. This is done in part by strategically leaving gaps in the warp, allowing the weft to behave in different ways. For coloring, she often does some post-production dye work.
Pinsky continues to find inspiration in her children. For a couple of pieces in the show, she recreated paintings made by her daughter.
“I’m fascinated by her because, like kids in general, they just make so many decisions,” Pinsky said. “They don’t second-guess themselves. Grownups do that.”
Admission to the exhibit is free and open to the public. It will be on display through July 5.
The First Coast Cultural Center is located at 6000B Sawgrass Village Circle, Ponte Vedra Beach. It is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. For further information, go to firstcoastculturalcenter.org or call 904-280-0614.
