Summer Wheat’s vivid, textured, and beautiful paintings explore themes of labor, community, and the symbiotic relationship between humanity and the natural world.
Known for her innovative techniques and bold palette, the Oklahoma-born, Brooklyn-based artist’s practice is rooted in a tactile engagement with materiality and a narrative approach that bridges the mythical to the everyday.
At the heart of her work lies a commitment to storytelling and reimagining historical art traditions. Her ‘Fountain’ series is emblematic of this aesthetic approach. In these works, she draws upon the archetype of the caregiver and cultivator, often represented by female figures engaged in acts of planting, watering, and nurturing.
The paintings reflect Wheat’s exploration of women’s roles in shaping physical and metaphorical landscapes, offering a celebratory yet, at the same time, critical examination of labor and creativity.
Now, Artspace in partnership with Artadia, is pleased to announce the release of Watering Weeds, 2024, a new series of unique limited edition prints by Summer Wheat, created in celebration of the non-profit grantmaking organization’s 25th anniversary.
Based on an original large-scale painting of the same name, the Watering Weeds, 2024 edition consists of 30 unique hand-embellished prints that reflect the artist’s practice of pushing the boundaries of materiality and abstraction.
The 10-color screenprint with hand-painted gouache and flocked crystalina on 320gsm Coventry Rag paper measures 24.5 x 17.5 inches and is signed and numbered on the front. It is $1,950 framed / $1,750 unframed.
“The woman’s role as a fountain in Watering Weeds shows her role in nature as the water source for the garden,” Wheat tells Artspace. “The garden grows as it is watered, and both the figure and her setting are responding to each other. We constantly need to be cultivated, nurtured, manicured, fed. It’s coming from this idea of taking care of oneself within this garden or one’s personal sphere and harvesting what you’re sewing.”
Wheat’s ‘Fountain’ works highlight her engagement with art history, recalling frescoes, medieval tapestries, and folk art traditions. She employs a technique that mimics the texture of woven fabric, creating a richly tactile surface that blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture. This textured approach, achieved by pushing paint through a fine mesh screen, lends her works an almost sculptural quality.
She has described how the process allows her to build layers of color and texture in a way that evokes the labor-intensive processes of weaving or embroidery. The vibrancy of her palette meanwhile, rich greens, reds, blues, and gold, reinforces the vitality of the scenes she depicts, celebrating the abundance and fecundity of nature.
The series also resonates with broader environmental themes, reminding viewers of the interconnectedness of human and ecological systems. Wheat’s figures dominate their environments but also exist in harmony with them, underscoring the relationship between humans and the earth.
Wheat has exhibited widely at museums and galleries internationally. She has been the subject of recent exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver; the Brooklyn Museum, and the Aspen Art Museum. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hammer Museum, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami, among others.
Proceeds from Watering Weeds, 2024 benefit the work of Artadia, a non-profit grantmaking organization and community of visual artists, curators, and patrons. Over two decades, Artadia has worked to foster a more just arts economy and improve the conditions for artists. Since its founding in 1999, it has awarded over $6 million to over 400 artists nationally. We asked Summer Wheat about the new edition and how it relates to her wider practice.
Your historical ‘non-art’ influences are wide-ranging, Native American weavings, astrology, music videos. What links these inspirations, and inspires you to make something new from them?
I think the forms of this world are super interesting, and I try to view them without any kind of judgements, or preconceived notions. I work to keep an open mind in terms of what I’m experiencing. I let myself see the forms from different resources so I can pull together something that links our past, present, and future.
I’m looking in several different corners to pull together an essence that can describe the energy of the moment; some kind of energetic response or representation that could create a feeling of what it’s like to exist in today’s world. We are bombarded by so much information—different ideas, different culture. It’s a lot to sort out.
Your recent show Fertile Ground featured a number of Watering works, including one that became this edition; can you tell us a little about the concept?
I’ve been exploring this theme of a garden for a quite a while. The reason I’m interested in gardens is I’m looking for a location or idea that can be traced back to the ancient past, or early ideas in human history that carry to the present.
Every religious story begins with a garden or relates to a mythical garden as a point of origin. I’ve been thinking about how the garden could be seen as a business, as a story, or as an idea of what you cultivate in the microcosm of yourself.
We are each our own inner garden. In the fountain paintings—Fountains, Watering Weeds, Watering Rocks, I was thinking about this internal garden being expressed externally. It’s a singular figure watering their own garden, so it becomes a self-fulfilling or sustaining garden and depicts a figure watering their own garden space.
There’s a give and take between the figure and the garden itself. The woman’s role as a fountain shows her role in nature as the water source for the garden. The garden grows as it is watered, and both the figure and her setting are responding to each other. We constantly need to be cultivated, nurtured, manicured, fed. It’s coming from this idea of taking care of oneself within this garden or one’s personal sphere and harvesting what you’re sewing.
You are hand embellishing each of the editions – what attracts you to this process?
I like the idea of hand-painting over the same image because this self-sustaining fountain inside the garden has all kinds of things that create chaos. Some of the painted characters interrupt and cause problems or are whimsical additions within the little garden space. I like the idea that there’s a stationary eternal fountain and different elements coming in and changing the landscape from day to day.
Bees come in representing danger, then there are bats, or strawberries. A wide range of things interrupt the stationary figure, but the figure is always engaged in a variety of ideas swarming through her garden. She represents an eternal force that is constantly engaged in both positive and negative experiences—whatever the surroundings bring.
What were the personal experiences and specific artistic influences that inspired the original work and how did they contribute to its aesthetic?
The fountain idea itself was inspired by some recent trips to Europe where there are many fountains. On my walks I would look out for water faucets and public fountains in the cities I traveled to. I felt very connected to them and was struck by the fact that these historic fountains were still supplying cities with water.
In America we don’t have the same history of public drinking fountains where they were once a practical object as well as cultural object of beauty. In European villages there is often a drinking well people can source their water from, and the fountain is a symbol of community, sharing, and life.
For this work they also become symbols for desire and this internal passion, expressing itself through explosive streaming water. Fountains have been architectural anchors for communities and cities, and I found it interesting to personify a fountain and use it as a personal totem. I wasn’t necessarily thinking of it, but it fell on the page. Sometimes the symbols I’m after organically come out during my drawing process. I liked the universal importance and symbolism of water.
. 
