For the past two decades, Hewitt has been interested in the mechanisms behind the construction of meaning and memory. Working serially, the artist has explored the practice of archiving and presentation, through various forms of ephemera and collage which are developed and transformed into the artist’s own tactics and language.
Hewitt began working on Rough Cuts, a suite of collages, in late March of 2020. Working with found paper, Hewitt’s new collages are evocative, minimalist works that are made using a monotype printmaking process to create geometric compositions. The extended iteration of Rough Cuts incorporates pointed references to the obfuscation and disruption of nineteenth-century taxonomies, presenting abstracted interpretations of botanical illustrations of various American wildflowers. These gestures not only resist classificatory fixity but also re-inscribe ephemeral and overlooked forms of knowledge into the art-historical record.