Jennifer A. Reis is a textile artist who creates intensively hand-worked, ornately beaded, and embellished paper doll icons on cloth using traditional and alternative materials. She also creates encaustic eco prints as a body of work marrying her love of printmaking and gardening, as well as a production textile line of indigo shibori art to wear and home goods. Her artistic practice has been honored with numerous awards and prizes, including Kentucky’s Al Smith Fellowship, national adjudicated and invitational exhibitions, and teaching opportunities at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, John C. Campbell Folk School, Craft Alliance Center of Art + Design, Cleveland Institute of Art, Society of Contemporary Craft, and the Southwest School of Art. A graduate of Columbus College of Art and Design, Syracuse University, and Morehead State University, she has multiple degrees in studio art, arts management, and art education. Currently she is a professor at UNC-Greensboro and resides in Martinsville, Virginia with her husband and an unruly pack of dogs and cats.
Botanicals is a body of work comprised of eco prints from native plants and cultivated herbs. Formally trained in printmaking, eco printing has married my love of gardening and nature with my traditional art school education. The plants are gathered, sandwiched between pieces of archival paper, steamed for several hours in a large canning pot, and then carefully dismantled to reveal dramatic and intuitive forms from the organic material. The prints are then enhanced with watercolor pencil and mounted on cradled paneled board with encaustic, a clear paint made of beeswax and tree-based resin. My preference is to work with symmetrical compositions as I do with my hand-stitched and embellished textile artworks. I am entranced by the transformation of nature materials into mirrored reflections that are akin to Rorschach tests.
- Created: 2021