Good Mother Gallery is pleased to present Negative Nancy, a solo exhibition by San Francisco-based artist Piper Lewine.

A true renaissance woman, Piper has dabbled in just about every medium of paint on canvas, glasswork, textiles, embroidery, photography, performance art, and music. Across each form she experiments with, Piper maintains a characteristic whimsy that is inspired by traditional folk material, childhood nostalgia, and found objects. In her visual work, those foundational elements are repurposed into vivacious contemporary pieces. Common in Piper’s oeuvre is otherworldly subject matter and playful characters showcased in bright, saturated colors and set within lush borders. The final results are endlessly charming and wholly unique.

Throughout Negative Nancy, Lewine draws inspiration from vintage children’s books, Eastern European folk art, and the moralistic charts found across India. Her compositions often feel like artifacts from an alternate moral universe, brightly rendered but slightly askew, as if some lesson is being taught through an unreliable narrator. New characters emerge in this body of work: devil-horned figures rendered in sugary color palettes, jolly creatures bearing uncanny expressions, and symbolic objects encased in ornamental borders. These characters embody the duality that pulses through Lewine’s practice, the tension between outward whimsy and a more introspective, shadowed undercurrent.

The exhibition features a mix of multi-tiled stained glass lightboxes, tufted rugs, and acrylic and oil paintings. Certain compositions reappear across materials, creating a layered conversation between texture, technique, and meaning. The stained glass works provide moments of stillness and clarity, while the paintings buzz with improvisation and material play. Through airbrush, wax pastel, colored gesso, resin, and collage, Lewine builds surfaces that are at once delicate and dense, revealing her evolving relationship with the act of making.

Negative Nancy • Piper Lewine