Catching Up With Jewel

Jewel was photographed and interviewed by Alison Engstrom at The Dominick in New York.

when we first chatted in May 2022, you had just released a new album and you have been very busy. congratulations on creating ‘The Portal: An Art Experience by Jewel’. I’m really excited to hear What inspired this new endeavor? 

I studied visual art a long time ago and have always loved it but my first love, music took off by accident the year I was homeless and I am sure grateful it did. I've always been drawn to the visual arts and in the last couple of years I have explored the different aspects to myself and in combination with behavioral health and bringing it all together in an immersive experience that might have a better shot of doing something for people and that was the birth of the concept. I went to Crystal Bridges because I had seen them before and I liked the ethos of what it stood for. They were my first pick and it and I am so glad it happened.

I created four pieces of original artwork. One is an oil painting of my son. It took me about 15 hours. Behind it is a poem that I wrote Kase when he was born and I am creating a handmade frame for it as well. Each piece represents one of the three portals. I created a sculpture, it’s called Chill; then there is a life-size hologram where I am holding a raven. The presence it has is pretty amazing. Then there is the ten-minute 200-piece drone light show controlled by a satellite signal and it’s orchestrated outdoors over a lake.

can you walk me through the exhibit?

When you enter the exhibit you are greeted with a hologram and I talk about the three planes. The inner realm is the mind, heart, your inner experiences, your psyche. It’s also our secrets and our emotions. The seen realm is everything visual; it encompasses our families, our jobs, our relationships. The unseen is the great mystery, which is everything from cave drawings from way back when to different theologies, it’s something beyond ourselves. The idea is how we can get in touch with those feelings and make decisions in this world based on what I am feeling and honor what I am feeling. When the three planes are in harmony you are doing pretty well and then the opposite is true when they are out of alignment, it’s where we see depression and anxiety. Throughout the two-hour experience, people can also go to their permanent collection, which is just incredible. They let me pick ten pieces of art that represent the inner, seen, and unseen. There is a video next to each work of art where I ask how the piece correlates to the three spheres and they write the answer in a notebook. Then the last one is the spheres all together, it’s the sculpture, and that’s where I ask people to identify one thing that causes the three spheres to be in conflict and another where inner worlds to be in harmony, it takes a little bit of introspection. The last question I ask as part of the exhibit is to fill in the blank is:  I sacrifice my attachment to X and dedicate it to Y. You are then given a meditation and a QR code to take home where I take you through a Dedication Meditation. The science of that in behavioral health is that our brains are pattern matchers. It’s like when you look for slug bugs all of a sudden you see slug bugs but maybe you didn’t before because you never asked your brain to notice. The reason these behavioral tools work is that your brain is being asked to notice perfectionism. 

I remember we talked about perfectionism last time, it’s such a relatable issue when it comes to being an artist. 

That’s one that I work on being present because once I am present I can come to terms with what is. Perfectionism is a dream, it’s a fantasy; you are obsessing over something you wish was and it is denying what is. So being present and saying I am here. 

How do you want people to feel? Also, is there any way for people to see it who can’t make it to the museum?

I want people to feel inspired and energized. I’ll be performing it and I will probably release the hologram and the soundscape; there will be the ending meditation. I need to see what it will be like to film the drones, but I would love to take this to other museums.

Since I first started listening to your music when it was released in the late 90s, I always keyed into the themes you talked about like flames, spirit, hands, being broken, etc. One of those you you mention in the meditation—and it’s something I love—is about making something ‘beautiful of your broken things.”

A lot of my favorite writers have done that using the same words over and over again. I didn’t mean to do it in my own writing but I have noticed that I have. I settle on images that mean something to me. The theme I have been stuck on recently is: all of our hearts are meant to be broken. It's what we do with the pieces that make us extraordinary, make something beautiful of your broken things. Brokenness isn’t who you are, we can’t spend all of our energy trying to avoid being broken. We are here to get hurt, it’s just part of the gig. If you spend your whole life in denial of being hurt you are really wasting your energy. 

Did you write these poems specifically for this experience or did you write them before and integrate them?

A few sentences I had like, you don’t get to say how life changes only how it changes you. 

Since May we celebrate mothers of all kinds, how has being a mom changed you? Were you ever concerned about being a mom because of your childhood experience?

I came to motherhood later and I was very glad I got to heal as much as I did going into it and because of that, I didn’t have too much work around it. Being a mother shows you your perfectionism and all of your faults in a different light.  I think that’s the difficult thing about being a parent. A lot of people talk about having it all, but I don’t think you can have it all, you have to make choices about what is right for everyone. Me choosing, after my divorce, to not work and make albums was so I could be present as a parent. The price I would pay would be in less album sales. You can’t let seven years of your career go and just pick it up where you left off. It doesn’t happen and that’s okay. I made that decision with my eyes open and I would be at peace with that because I know what I got for that price and I am so proud. It’s so funny that in our world those are considered losses. I felt that way too when I took a two-year break after Hands and that album. I couldn’t handle that level of fame, I didn’t like it. Now it would be called a mental health break, but there were no words like that. I was shamed and the press treated me very cruelly but I knew it was an act of power. I knew I was choosing me and to the world, it looked like I was losing and that is something we need to reckon with. It’s an act of power that a lot of people don’t recognize or validate.  

You’ve done so much work with Inspiring Children Foundation. I’d love to know how we prepare our children for the world? I think about this personally every day. 

You can’t protect them from being hurt, but you can equip them for battle. For me it’s been my goal and job as a parent is to equip. 

I’ve been teaching myself over the past ten years or so to equip myself so I can do so for myself and my son.

What’s missing in the mental health space right now is raising awareness, which we should be but we are 500K therapists short. So I am quite cruel to raise awareness based on the fact that we are short on therapists. We have to get very detail-oriented, like great, your child can be and express all of these feelings as a four-year–old but what do we do with it? I remember once my son weaponized his emotions so that he could get what he wanted out of me (laughs)  I always say, tell me your feelings, I want to know and I care about them. But at the right age and appropriate time, I made it his responsibility to notice if he was sad, or angry and what can we do about it. I helped him to manage it by telling stories and all of these little things. You can’t explain away or change how you feel but it’s about getting more responsible for it.

You launched Innerworld last year, Can you share more about the platform and the mission? 

We launched it over a year ago. It’s for everyone 18 and up. It’s a virtual mental health platform. We built it because of the lack of therapists.  We took what we learned from the foundation, which was teaching skills, so it’s all skill-based. We use CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and DBT (dialectical behavior therapy), which are pretty similar. CBT is when you talk about it and then go and behave on what you talk about. That’s ultimately what I created for myself when I was homeless. We do everything in a group setting and there is a social component. It’s a safe social environment—there are no trolls, just trained guides. So let’s say at 2 am you are freaking out because your baby is colicky and you are not dealing. You can go on Innerworld and say, I am panicking and shame spiraling. There are guides there 24/7. You can pull up tools instantly and you’ll be surrounded by people who are all working on the same skills. 

It’s an excellent tool that everyone can benefit from. What else do you have going on? I know you are touring this summer with Melissa Etheridge in July in select cities. 

I am starting to work on an album based on some of the lines in the meditation, like ‘why sleep in a cage with a sky this wide’ and ‘walk with peace and peace becomes you’. I’ve built those into longer formats, I’m looking to create a soothing 45-minute piece. I’ve also been writing poems every day, too.

follow jewel on instagram

learn about The Portal: An Art Experience by Jewel at crystal bridges

see jewel in concert this summer

learn about innerworld

learn about inspiring children’s foundation

read the ROSE & IVY may 2022 cover story starring jewel

A special thank you to The Dominick