Jocelyn Mathewes - Artist - LOCATE Arts

JOCELYN MATHEWES Website CV View Blog Feature

Symptoms/Side-Effects

spiraling paper loop of individual origami elements made from prescription sheets, suspended -- A meditation on the ongoing, everyday nature of managing chronic illness symptoms. Often, the symptoms in the body are caused by both illness and the medication itself; healing is incomplete, never-ending.
14” x 14” | 2024
The Water Was Troubled (Wound Repair in a Sterile Environment)

Polaroid emulsion lifts on paper, sewn onto gauze -- Documentation of the body that reflects different treatments, areas of concern, and symptoms.
11” x 15” | 2024
Spent (Mark 5:26)

discarded pill pack, shredded money, gold leaf, prescription sheets, in 8” x 10” shadow box -- Reflecting on the undiagnosed and misunderstood illnesses in today’s world, the incomprehensibility of medical billing, and the mystery of medicine.
8” x 10” | 2023
Para(site)dise

paper constructions formed from cyanotype prints of weeds pulled out of my garden - includes polyhedral shapes -- PARA(SITE)DISE makes visible the labor required to maintain a kind of homeostasis and hold the weeds at bay. This labor maintains is a beautiful work, but ultimately can overtake and overshadow someone’s time and mental space—much like the labor of healing from illness. As the document of this invisible labor grows, it overtakes and overshadows its surroundings.
variable, from 16' w x 8' h to 30' w x 8' h | 2023
Do I want to be made well?

vintage road maps, cyanotype origami shapes, acrylic paint, glitter, spray paint, gel pens, cotton gauze, medical wrap, prescription sheets on canvas -- Raised components emerge from the surface to confront the viewer in the torn and re-constructed maps, littered with medical detritus.
24” x 20” | 2022
Never the Same Again

series of 7 sculptures: IV tubing, wire, fabric, cotton, medical wrap Slinky® -- The bent Slinky® is a metaphor for an injured body — once you bend or distort a Slinky®, it never moves quite the same way it used to. A body broken, injured, sick (or different in its particular way) may function the way it is unexpected, yet it retains its beauty, joy, meaning. In each sculpture the broken Slinky® is placed on a podium of reverence, and interwoven with medical detritus in order to become a complete metaphor for the broken body. Its past — full of joyful movement — continues on in a new form.
| 2022
Medicine Threshold

sculptural curtain made of prescription medicine bottles, shredded money, gold paint, metallic fibers, vending machine balls -- As a child, I remember walking back and forth through a beaded curtain made of wooden spools. I would repeat the action for the magical feeling of walking over a threshold as in a fairy tale. Entering into the fairy land, it works upon you – sometimes in ways you don’t anticipate or desire. Medicine is the same way. This piece illustrates the magic of collaborative research and collective testing that makes medicines possible, the magical ability of medication to heal, the cost and preciousness of medicine, and the uncertainty of side-effects.
36” x 72” | 2021
30 Days

set of mixed-media collages constructed using vintage Betty Crocker recipe cards, road maps, vellum, embroidery, ink, paint, cyanotype, prescription information sheets, medical detritus gauze, hospital bracelets and wire -- Over the course of 30 days in 2021, I wove the medical detritus into the vintage recipe cards, mirroring how — as a mother and primary caregiver with chronic illness — I must weave my own needs into the expectations of domestic life.
36” x 36” | 2021
The Heart Size is Unremarkable 1

image transfer on watercolor paper, metal leaf, collage, embroidery
9” x 12” | 2019

JOCELYN MATHEWES Website CV

Tri-cities, TN | Mixed Media, Photography, Printmaking

Bio:

Jocelyn Mathewes is a mixed-media interdisciplinary artist, whose work documents the invisible labor of the body. Working primarily in cyanotype, collage, and alternative photographic processes, she transforms the materials of illness — prescription sheets, medical detritus, hospital bracelets, weeds pulled from the garden — into objects of beauty, grief, and dark wit. Her practice is rooted in the conviction that chronic illness generates a kind of knowledge that culture is reluctant to see: that constraint can be a grammar, and that what the body loses, an art practice can make visible and transmissible.

Mathewes is based in East Tennessee and has exhibited widely across the United States. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Reece Museum, and has been featured in The HAND Magazine, Image Journal, and Cyanotype: The Blueprint in Contemporary Practice by Christina Z. Anderson, the definitive English-language volume on the medium. She is a 2025 ArtFields competition artist and a 2026 solo exhibitor at the William King Museum of Art.

In 2020, she founded EAT/ART space, an alternative gallery in her home dining room in Johnson City, Tennessee — a community institution built to create opportunities for Appalachian artists within the constraints of rural living and pandemic isolation. She has curated exhibitions at the Reece Museum, Arts Depot Abingdon, and Create Appalachia, and has lectured on illness, creativity, and artistic practice at Milligan University and the Artist/Mother Podcast Network.

Mathewes holds a B.A. in Studio Art and English Literature from Messiah College and has participated in residencies with the Artist Residency in Motherhood (ARiM), Makers Circle, and Stay Home Gallery.

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