The Project is pleased to present Jessica Rankin’s second solo exhibition at the gallery featuring her embroidery works and a new series of drawings and watercolors. Rankin’s hand-embroidered panels of organdy resume her exploration of memory, geographic displacement and the passage of time. Embedded with personal, cartographic and scientific information, these detailed mosaics are much more revelatory than they appear at first glance.

Meandering between diaristic excerpts, poetic interludes and philosophical proposals, Rankin’s meticulously stitched textual patterns produce a field of non-linear associations reflecting the fragmentation and cross-referencing of lived experience in memory. With a visual vocabulary that relies heavily on the topographical and celestial—constellations, planets, mountain ranges, river deltas, and urban sprawl, among others—Rankin integrates text and image to construct what she refers to as “brainscapes,” which function as abstract portraits of journeys, both physical and mental. In reference to past work, this new series of embroidery works were completed with a looser, more painterly approach with threads hanging from the organdy canvas. Delicately pinned an inch away from the wall, the translucent sheets of organdy allow Rankin’s handiwork to cast shadows, thereby adding a further level of depth and definition.

Rankin’s drawings and watercolors pursue an alternate path in which details of landscapes come into focus. Trees, vegetation, rock formations, horizons, the Sun and the Moon are all featured as points of meditation for gestural brushstrokes and pooling washes of color.