Jess Blaustein

Sometimes the maddening beauty of being an artist is that we create our own weird problems to solve. For awhile now, I’ve been preoccupied with the idea of reanimating seams of old garments that have been worn to threads. Compressed flat in their housing for storage and shipping, Vestiges can be pulled out into various tangled forms for display. Not sure I’ve got these figured out yet, but seriously grateful to Austin-based artists & @icosa_art curators @rebholzjones & @leonalesi for being open to the experiment! Vestiges join a wonderfully diverse group of works for ICOSA’s Semicentennial Breakdown: Window Dressing at 50—an exhibition celebrating the 50th iteration of the Window Dressing Project, which I had the pleasure of being part of in 2020 with my dear friend @rakheejaindesai . In great company w/20 other artists who’ve dressed ICOSA’s windows in past lives. Friends in and around Austin, there will be an Artist & Curator Talk Sunday Feb 1 at 1pm ✨ ***** Vestige 02 (The Dress I Wore to Bridgette’s Wedding) & Vestige 03 (Butterick 1988), 2024
Extracted garment seams over wire armature with gesso and acrylic on cardboard
Closed: 13 x 11 x 2 inches; Open: Dimensions variable #garmentcreatures #tactileghosts #textilesculpture

What does a minute look like when it’s made by hand? Lean back, loop the stitch, and let time take shape. This exhibition invites you to crochet a simple chain stitch and create your own minute line. Whether you’re filling time or killing time, we invite you to slow down and take pleasure in the process. 'Minute Lines' by Jess Blaustein returns as part of DISTRACTION, reopening 18 February. 〰️ Installation view of Minute Lines (2025) by Jess Blaustein (US) in Science Gallery Melbourne’s DISTRACTION. Photography: Astrid Mulder, 2025.

A few belated images of some of my Loaded Forms (Ruins) in the small and mighty group show Resisting Erasure @goodworkinstitute Hope to see you at the closing reception tonight!!! Fri Nov 14, 4-7pm 65 Saint James Street, Kingston ✨ Artists: Gülnar Babayeva, Onaje Benjamin, Shirley Parker-Benjamin, Gerado Castro, Chong Kang, Ted Dixon, Richard Franklin, Poet Gold, Dan Goldman, Maureen Gates, Judit Germain Hein, Yoko Izu, Karen Jaimes, Norm Magnusson, Lala Montoya, Sandi Morales, Julia Santos Solomon, Christina Siu, Suprina Troche Co-curated by Onaje Benjamin @ujamaastudio , Shirley Parker Benjamin, Maureen Gates & Dan Goldman 🪟📄 Loaded Forms (Ruins), 2021-2024 Emptied and cut U.S. State Department forms with acrylic and gesso on household waste paper 11.5 x 40 x 3 inches 📷 1, 2 Loaded Forms (Ruins) 3 Good Work Insitute 🩷💚

Trying hard and failing to focus in the studio this afternoon, so in the spirit of #distraction, I’m sharing these pics of my new installation taking shape on the other side of the planet 🌎 where I think winter is just beginning to slip into spring. It’s called Minute Lines and it’s up at Science Gallery Melbourne’s fantastic and utterly timely show DISTRACTION 26.07.25 – 09.05.26. DISTRACTION plugs into the streaming torrent of content and the places our brains go when we want to focus on anything but the thing. This is the third iteration of Minute Lines, an ongoing series of mine where the lines are as long as it takes to make them. For the first iteration begun in 2020, each day I set a timer and stitched a continuous line on canvas for 1 minute, then 2 minutes, then 3, and so on. It became the book 15 Minute Lines with Lost Time because it turns out I’m not so great at keeping time. ⏲️☁️ For the second iteration, I wanted to create the lines in space without a substrate and crocheted chain lengths 1 to 60 minutes long which together form a wayward and embodied kind of clock but not a Clock. 〰️📏 This third iteration invites others into the process to crochet lines for however many minutes they can spare, and to fill the spools with time as line wound over the course of the exhibition. It is a collective capture of what I hope will become miles and miles of beautifully non-instrumentalised time. 🧶⏱️🧵 Huge thanks to all the wonderful gallery goers who are helping to steal some time from the Clock, to the amazing folks @scigallerymel @unimelb , and especially to Bern Hall for your transdisciplinary curatorial wizardry 🪄✨ across an amazingly eclectic group of digital and analog projects. Photography by Astrid Mulder (Images 1,2) & Gregory Lorenzutti (Images 3, 4) #installation #interactiveart #time #timebased #textileart #durational #contemporaryart #jessblaustein

In NYC today for art fairs? Come see The Golden Thread 2 at the South Street Seaport! Open 12-6:30 at 207 Front Street + many artists will be onsite 2-4pm. Curated by @BravinLee @sitespecificbravin ✨ My work hides in corners and stairwells and quietly winds its way around some truly incredible pieces you’ll want to see in person. #sitespecific #installation #communicationinfrastructure #postinternet #textileart #contemporaryart

Thrilled to join a truly incredible group of artists in The Golden Thread 2: A Fiber Art Exhibition, curated by the wonderful Karin Bravin @BravinLee programs, and occupying the multiple and meandering levels of 207 Front Street in Manhattan’s historic South Street Seaport. The exhibition is up through May 16, and many artists will be onsite tomorrow, Sunday April 27, from 2-4pm. If you’re in and around NYC, please stop by! My work Transmission 36-44919 hides in corners and stairwells and quietly winds its way around some real showstoppers worth a visit. 🧵 
Cloth scraps and plastic tarp with pigment ink on 300+ linear feet of discarded coaxial cable
 Created specifically for the site, Transmission 36-44919 is cloth-covered coaxial cable crafted to channel past lives of the building it moves through. Fragments of archival research into the history of 207 Front Street and the South Street Seaport are externalized on the surface, in the slow physical form of pigment ink on fabric, rather than invisibly carried at high speeds within. Transmission Line is wrapped with scraps and made from the discards, leftovers, and remains of contemporary communication infrastructure coiling along floors, ceilings, and wall surfaces everywhere around us. #sitespecific @sitespecificbravin #installation #communicationinfrastructure #postinternet #textileart #contemporaryart

Jess Blaustein’s work is “literally” the thread that runs through the entire show - all 300 linear feet of it! Created specifically for this site, Transmission 36-44919 channels past lives of the building it moves through, carrying fragments of archival research into the history of 207 Front St and the South Street Seaport. Materials: Cloth scraps and plastic tarp with pigment ink on discarded coaxial cable. #thegoldenthreadII #bravinleeprograms #fiberart

Upstate friends! If you’re in the neighbourhood, please stop by @JaneStreetArtCenter ’s @sketchbook_art_gallery tomorrow afternoon for the opening of You’re Breaking Up. One of my Loaded Forms found its way into this small group show juried by @elizabethkeithline as a companion to her wonderful solo exhibition, Breaking Broken, right next store. Loaded Forms (Ruins), DS-82 Emptied and cut U.S. State Department Form DS-82 with acrylic and gesso on waste paper 11.5 x 2 x 2 inches Artists Included: Onaje Benjamin, Jess Blaustein, Alaiyo Bradshaw, Lucille Colin, Matthew Crain, Maxine Davidowitz, Maureen Gates, Dan Goldman, Ed Grant, James Hannaham, Trang Huynh, Yoko Izu, Roxie Johnson, Chong Kang, Tracy Leavitt, Dorothea Marcus, Jim Nickel, Yukie Ohta, David Ort, Suzanne Parker, Susan Phillips, Eileen Power, Regina Quinn, Betsey Regan, John Scribner, Amy Silberkleit, Linda Stillman, Mimi Young 📄📄📄📄 Loaded Forms is an ongoing series begun mid-pandemic in a bare waiting room of a U.S. embassy on the other side of earth, where with no material allowed on my person, I mentally traced the outlines of a passport renewal form. From there, I fell down a U.S. State Department rabbit hole, and taking one form each day having to do with global mobility and identification, I downloaded, traced, emptied, filled, and exploded its fields into a collaged constellation. Over subsequent years, the paper negatives folded into a crumbling cityscape, the bureaucratic ruins of nation-building and border control. #formfilling #loadedforms #papersculpture #ruins #contemporaryart #jessblaustein

Look up close to this piece by Jess Blaustein @bplotstudio 🤩 Just a couple more days before we highlight more fantastic work curated by Erika Diamond @diamond_erika for our summer publication and online exhibition “It’s Complicated” Erika shares, “Essentially, I found myself drawn to works with “a lot going on” whose intricacies revealed a lot more beneath the surface texture. These works cover thorny topics like relationships, identity, sovereignty, and memory. Marked by excess and reiteration, they examine the perpetual friction between past and future, good and evil, love and loss.” We’re so excited to share this work with you, beginning July 3rd. #onlineexhibition #artpublication #contemporaryart #contemporarypainter #artist #ilikeyourwork

Super excited to share 📖 15 Minute Lines with Lost Time ⏱️ in such wonderful company @BravinLee programs Artists’ Book Month II: The World is a Scandal opening Thurs June 6th 6-8pm & on view through June 28th @ 526 W26th St nyc 🌎 “As inauthenticity prospers and pan-Fascism rears its head and blurs the line between reality and nightmare, the simple honest tangibility of the artist book is a refuge”🪽 Exhibition also includes a selection of works from @ubugallery ✨ 15 Minutes Lines with Lost Time, 2024 Thread on canvas, cloth-covered chipboard 9 x 20 x 2 inches (open); 9 x 9 x 2 inches (closed) Score for Minute Lines> Find a surface to become pages. Determine a standard size. Prepare blank pages. On the first day, set a timer for 1 minute. Locate a starting point on page 1. Start the timer. Draw a continuous line . Do not plan the line’s trajectory in advance. Stop when the time is up. On the second day, set a timer for 2 minutes. Locate a starting point on page 2. Start the timer. Draw a continuous line . Stop when the time is up. On the third day, set a timer for 3 minutes. And so on. Try to reach the 10 minute line. Go further if you can. Stop when it is time. Compile your pages. Set aside all mistakes, holes, splotches, malfunctions as lost time. #artistbook #artistsbooks #durationalart #losttime #jessblaustein

Today is the last day to see the wonderful KinoSaito’s year-end Community Art Benefit Exhibition. All artworks for sale help to support local artists and future @kinosaito programming. ❄️🤍❄️🤍 Pictured: Recover, 2019, Cut cotton on canvas, 11 x 11 inches

Transmission Line, 2023>
Pigment ink on cloth-covered coaxial cable Transmission Line channels past lives of places it moves through. Historical fragments are externalized on its surface, in the slow physical form of pigment ink on fabric, rather than invisibly carried at high speeds within. Transmission Line is made from the discards, leftovers, and remains of contemporary communications infrastructure coiled along floors, ceilings, and wall surfaces everywhere around us. Pictured here: ~100 linear feet of Transmission Line begun in December 2022 for a site-specific installation at Hastings-on-Hudson's Village Hall. Carrying bits and pieces of archival research into the history of the site, the cable unfurled and time-traveled throughout the old municipal building upstairs and down. #builtonthesiteof #sitespecific #installation #archive #architecture #technology #communicationinfrastructure #infrastructureart #coaxialcable #textiles #postinternet #contemporaryart #bplotstudio #jessblaustein