Singer Jewel enters the art world with The Portal At Crystal Bridges

Jewel is best known for her meteoric rise to fame in the 1990s with her album Pieces of Me. But the immortally youthful muse has never stopped creating over the past four decades, leaving traces of her artistic work wherever she goes. Now fifty years old, Jewel proves it’s never too late to innovate. From music to painting, curating to artificial intelligence, Jewel has continued to reinvent herself. Each phase of her career is a piece of creative revelation, and this latest exhibition at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, is by no means the exception to the rule.

The interview with Jewel was a verbal treat, as eloquent as her timeless, Grammy-winning lyrics.

“I’ve always used art to heal, to create a medicine, a tool to confront concepts and process them myself,” she explained. “…Art is so powerful because it doesn’t need permission to enter the soul.”

Jewel contacted CEO Rod Bigelow via cold calling in 2023.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” Bigelow admitted, “but Jewel painted a captivating vision that combined art, technology and wellness.”

Jewel knew what she wanted. Finally, she spoke to Crystal Bridges in particular: “Noble, but not elitist.”

“You would be a great first choice,” she said. “Alice Walton, the museum’s founder, was an outsider and the art world was cruel to her. But she still provided world-class art for backwoods people. Art is for everyone; art changes lives. Everyone needs access to world-class art.”

A native of Homer, Alaska, Jewel has navigated the divide between poverty and high culture herself, attending the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy with the support of her hometown while experiencing homelessness as a teenager. Fame is just one turning point in a life of empathetic storytelling and authenticity, so democratizing access is as important to her as the museum’s mission to build community using cutting-edge technology.

Crystal Bridges has previously exhibited groundbreaking blockchain art, including works by Beeple, the viral digital artist who broke records at Christie’s with the NFT (and Ethereum) sale of his work “The First 5000 Days” for $69 million.

ForbesCelebrated NFT artist Beeple shows HUMAN ONE at Crystal Bridges Museum in ArkansasFrom Alexandra Bregman

With such exhibitions in mind, Jewel developed The Portal, which features holographic art about travel alongside traditional paintings. The doors of the museum collection opened to her for curation, and Jewel made thoughtful choices about contemporary artists. She skipped well-known names like Mark Rothko and instead chose Ruth Asawa and Julie Mehrutu, making the total collection ten works. Jewel also included four of her own works in the exhibition, weaving them subtly into the exhibition.

Ultimately, however, The Portal is an experience that transcends the two dimensions of paint and canvas. It is a surrealist realm that reinvigorates the pure concept of a journey, using digital aspects to enhance its meditative and mystical qualities.

Jewel said she was a founding investor in Innerworld, the behavioral health app. She uses her personal experiences and those in the field of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and mental health to combine them in her art, inviting visitors to navigate the worlds of reality just as she had done with songs. She wanted the feeling to be “as intimate as if you were writing a song in your room.”

The program features a “meditative art walk” and a silent disco every night, with 200 illuminated drones moving to a concept song by Jewel. The drone flights are organized by Nova Sky Stories, whose recent clients include Central Park.

The portal is defined by three areas: the visible area, the inner area, and the drone show… the invisible, unknown world of the future. Jewel used science to “synchronize the nervous system of humans,” with the song timed to the human heartbeat.

And yet she remains modest.

“In this tiny museum funnel, my job is to help people forget their daily routine, learn something, and concentrate so they can head out on the art walk,” she continued.

She made great use of the meditative properties of the earth and the power of “emotional impermanence,” as she grew up in the wilderness and felt “sheltered by the land.”

“I learned to be human by observing nature,” she said without hesitation. “Everything changes. It has to. Those are the laws of physics.”

The three-month ticket experience was a huge success and will continue until July.

“When I first actually experienced The Portal, I was in awe,” said Bigelow, who attended. “Seeing Jewel’s vision come to life was kind of ethereal and inspiring.”

However, Jewel is successful enough not to worry about that. She prefers to focus on the creative process. After all, she “gave up on perfection” after the birth of her only son.

“I hope my life is my best work of art,” she concluded majestically. “That’s not a popular view. Our world rewards us for a hit, but that has nothing to do with the artistry of your life.”