Jennifer Jo McGregor is an accomplished curator, arts planner, and writer who is re-engaging as a maker of objects. Trained as an artist, she has approached all her work through that lens of a creator. Her project-oriented art practice draws on her archive, experience, and curiosity about our relationship to place. By utilizing what’s at hand, often textiles and paper, she creates elements that may be presented as installations.
Artwork & Projects
Charting The Narrows & The Harbor
In this new body of work, Jennifer Jo McGregor expands her approach to place by constructing artifacts inspired by The Narrows and the New York Harbor. She became acquainted with Bay Ridge through curating three exhibitions at the gallery. Her notebooks from these projects were used for the map series. She is grateful to the support of an expanding network that has helped make this work possible.
The Narrows, the majestic entrance to the New York Harbor, defines Bay Ridge. A mile to the east a visitor enters Stand4 and encounters The Narrows, a kaleidoscope of color extending across the main wall evoking an experience of the light, sound, wind, and the shoreline’s weather. The artwork is composed of hundreds of spirals made from repurposed sweaters collected for this project.
The Narrows, 2026. Repurposed sweaters, glue. Dimensions variable.
A series of cast paper and encaustic assemblages explore perspectives and relationships between land and water. The artworks are inspired by maps in the collection of the New York Public Library that date from 1747, 1844, and 1905. Originally created for mariners to navigate the Lower and Upper Bays of the New York Harbor and for planners to establish sources of encroaching pollution, the maps document place names, navigational features, changing forms of transportation, and expanded neighborhoods.
This pair is inspired by A draught of New York from the Hook to New York Town (1749–1767), that is part of The English Pilot: The Fourth Book (1775) that includes navigational charts and descriptions for navigating from Hudson Bay to the Caribbean Islands. It is uniquely positioned with west at the top of the map.
Sewer Outlets, Shellfish Beds and Analysis Points, Cast Sea, 2026. Cast cotton and shredded notebook, encaustic on notebook pages, 31 x 23 in.
From the Hook to New York Town, Cast Sea, 2026. Cast cotton fiber and notebook paper, encaustic on notebook pages, 18 x 22 in. (left); From the Hook to New York Town, Cast Land, 2026. Cast cotton fiber and notebook paper, encaustic on notebook pages, 18 x 22 in. (right).
This pair is inspired by Outline Map of New York Harbor & Vicinity: Showing Main Tidal Flow, Sewer Outlets, Shellfish Beds & Analysis Points, a map accompanied a report of New York Bay Pollution Commission in 1905.
Sewer Outlets, Shellfish Beds and Analysis Points, Cast Land, 2026. Cast cotton and shredded notebook, encaustic on notebook pages, 31 x 23 in.
Sewer Outlets, Shellfish Beds and Analysis Points, Cast Sea, 2026. Cast cotton and shredded notebook, encaustic on notebook pages, 31 x 23 in.
This pair is inspired by New York Harbor and Entrances: From the U.S. Coast Surveys (ca. 1844) that focuses on the channels to enter the harbor through the Lower Bay.
Channels New York Harbor and Entrance, Cast Land, 2026. Cast cotton and shredded notebook, encaustic on notebook pages, 23 x 25 in.
Channels New York Harbor and Entrance, Cast Sea, 2026. cast cotton fiber and shredded notebook, encaustic on notebook pages, 23.5’ x 26”
Domiciles 1958-2023
Domiciles 1958–2023, 2023–2024. Repurposed sweaters, glue, wire, 60 x 90 x 5 in.
Domiciles 1958–2023 is a textural landscape memoir made while in residence at the Hambidge Center, Rabun Gap, Georgia. To prepare for the project, she mapped the places where she had lived, sketching floor plans from memory, revisiting dreams and the sensations of each place to create the template for the piece. Spirals made of strips of sweaters are formed into 18 emblems ranging from 5 to 29 inches in diameter, sized to represent the number of years in each home. After experimenting with different presentation methods, they were ultimately hung in a spiral on the wall.
Domiciles 1958–2023 was exhibited in Roundish, a group show curated by Mimi Czajka Graminski in 2025 at the Olive Free Library Gallery, West Shokan, New York.
It also appeared in Marking Time with Fabric and Thread by Tommye McClure Scanlin, Schiffer Craft, 2024.
Study for Domiciles 1958–2023, 2023–24.
Finding My Voice
Finding My Voice installation view.
Finding My Voice was created through revisiting graduate art history research papers on subjects ranging from “Peter Behrens and the Schism between Architecture and Sculpture and Painting” to “Perceiving Landscape through a Sculptural Frame.” Each paper is daylighted in a new form by cutting the pages and weaving them onto packing material. The physical act of weaving parallels the original research and writing. There is something anachronistic about seeing the actual paper with its poor reproductions in this new form. The tapestries were presented as an installation on a painted background using colors from Benjamin Moore 2023 Color Trends.
Two discrete paper sculptures installed on painted wall: 3 Exhibition Reviews Topics in Contemporary Art, 2022–23. Original art history papers and packing paper, 36 x 20 x 5 in. (left); Perceiving Landscape through a Sculptural Frame, 2022–23. Original art history papers and packing papers, 39 x 20 x 4 in. (right).
Installation detail.
Two discrete paper sculptures installed on painted wall: Public Art in American Temples of Civilization, 2022–23. Original art history papers and packing paper, 66 x 22 x 5 in. (left); Jean-Jacques Lequeu, Subterranean Architect, 2022–23. Original art history papers and packing paper, 46 x 38 x 5 in. (right).
Installation detail.
Two discrete paper sculptures installed on painted wall: Peter Behrens and the Schism between Architecture and Sculpture and Painting, 2022–23. Original art history papers and packing paper, 106 x 22 x 6 in. (left); Expressions of Power, Technology and Gender in the Sixteenth-Century Garden, 2022–23. Original art history papers and packing paper, 105 x 22 x 6 in. (right).
Installation detail.
Two discrete paper sculptures installed on painted wall: Exalting the Triumph of Virtue in the Piazza della Signoria, 2022–23. Original art history papers and packing paper, 87 x 22 x 4 in. (left, two pieces); Definition by Contrast, The Urban Frame of Prospect Park, 2022–23. Original art history papers, 75 x 33 x 6 in. (right).
Installation detail.
Listening to You
Listening to You is a series of handmade paper pieces that incorporating shredded paper from notebooks that were used as tools for listening.
Listening to You 6, 2023. Handmade paper with notebook pulp, 26 x 11 in.
Listening to You 3, 2023. Handmade paper with notebook pulp and collage elements, 9 x 11 in.
Listening to You 10, 2023. Handmade paper with notebook pulp, 9 x 11 in.
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Exhibitions
Keep It Together, group show curated by Elizabeth Keithline
Wallkill River Center for the Arts, Montgomery, New York
August 22–September 27, 2026Charting the Narrows & The Harbor
Stand4 Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
May 16–June 27, 2026Roundish, group show curated by Mimi Czajka Graminski
Olive Free Library Gallery, West Shokan, New York
September 20–November 1, 2025 -
Commentary
Conversation with Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel and Jennifer McGregor, Voices Interior Beauty Salon, January 2025
Excerpt about Domiciles 1958–2023 in Marking Time with Fabric and Thread, Tommye McClure Scanlin and Foreword by Sarah C. Swett, Schiffer Craft, 2024
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Residencies
Seasonal Oasis Sabbatical, a yearlong writing workshop with Gretchen Henderson, 2025
Creative Residency, Hambidge Center for Art, Rabun Gap, Georgia, 2023