Artist Profile: Lewis Jenkins

Overview
Lewis Jenkins is an Asheville-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice merges reverence and rebellion through the transformation of salvaged sacred materials. Working primarily with glass, text, and symbolism, Jenkins examines themes of queerness, faith, desire, and reclamation. Their work often reconfigures devotional objects into acts of tender resistance—creating space for vulnerability, eroticism, and spiritual subversion to coexist.

In the gentlest of men • makes me want • like a woman again, Jenkins reimagines a shattered church window as both altar and confessional. Rendered in acid-bright acrylic and Persian script, the piece juxtaposes iconography of the divine feminine with longing and reclamation. The work honors queer desire as holy, fragile, and powerful.

Featured Artwork

Bushwick Gallery

• Artwork Title: the gentlest of men • makes me want • like a woman again
• Year of Creation: 2025
• Medium: Acrylic on glass / salvaged church window
• Dimensions: 30 x 14 x 1 inches
• Location: Asheville, NC