Summer Wheat: Foragers

The Future (and the past) is Female: Summer Wheat’s whimsical, often tongue-in-cheek tableaux in rich jewel tones punctuated with bright neons, teem with fantastical figures that imagine tribes of women hunting, collaborating, celebrating, and ultimately replacing millennia of images of male rulers and warriors.

Summer Wheat’s unique formative experiences with art growing up in Oklahoma were shaped by the aesthetic and conceptual drive of the images that surrounded her from the rich textures Native American weavings to the brilliant hues of Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers. Bridging those early influences with the canon of Western art (from ancient sculpture to medieval tapestries) and popular references such as astrology and music videos, the artist’s work centers female archetypes 0in her expansive practice of painting, sculpture, and large-scale installation.

For the artist’s first monograph, curator Jen Sudul Edwards discusses the wide range of subjects that inform Wheat’s work and positions her use of materials in the context of alchemy. Curator Anne Ellegood in conversation with the artist traces Wheat’s transition from painting to sculptural work, large-scale installations ,and first foray into building a freestanding architectural space. Jennifer Krasinski explores Wheat’s unique approach to painting, with her large panels seemingly a cross between intricate beadwork and the pixel-like structure of a digital image. Artist Diedrick Brackens speaks with Wheat about lines—from one that is drawn by hand to the ones that define spaces between art and craft, and the ones defined by a single thread.

Jen Sudul Edwards, Ph.D., is the Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art at The Mint Museum in Charlotte.

Jennifer Krasinski is a writer and critic, and frequent contributor to
4Columns, Artforum, Bookforium, the New Yorker, and others. Diedrick Brackens is a Los Angeles-based textile artist and poet.

Anne Ellegood is the Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA).