ALEXIS GRANWELL

Commission for Penn Medicine’s Clifton Center for Medical Breakthroughs Curated by Katie Lee and the Philadelphia Art Museum, 2025

This commission explores the materiality, tactility, and malleability of paper pulp. Both the sculpture and nearby pulp painting are made entirely from linen paint and cotton paper, yet take on distinctly different forms.

Alexis Granwell explores the physicality of her materials through a low-relief sculpture crafted from cotton paper and linen pulp paint. Unfurling gently across the wall, the work moves in quiet rhythms. Its muted palette and textured forms evoke wings, roots, and the slow, patient work of repair. The surface holds the memory of touch, suspending time in the soft accumulation of texture and form.

In the painting, Granwell captures the dynamic movement of spouting water or botanical growth, suggesting transformation and renewal. Working while the pulp is still wet, she repeatedly presses it to extract water—a technique that allows for textured layers. She allows the material to guide the direction of the work, responding intuitively to how the linen pulp settles. This dialogue with the medium, along with its irregular, skin-like surfaces, imbues the work with anthropomorphic qualities, making it feel organic and alive. This painting was created at The Brodsky Center at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, a collaborative hub for papermaking and printmaking.

In the watercolors, Granwell began this series as a way to ease anxiety during the pandemic. Since then, the work has evolved into an ongoing exploration of an alphabet of shapes that inform her sculptures. The drawings evoke architectural fragments, weather systems, plants, and bodies, merging color with touch to create a richly layered visual language.