Today we’d like to introduce you to Denise M. A. Brown.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I am an artist. I grew up in Indiana, was born Denise Marie Agatha Brown, and married Frank Brown also from Indiana. Despite common opinion, I actually kept my maiden name. I arrived in Texas about 35 years or more ago from New Mexico where I lived and received a Master’s in Art. It was a backwards landing from New Mexico to Texas by way of Chicago and when I landed it was with a humbling thud. I think that often we find ourselves from one chapter to another in our lives, walking backwards because the journey we travel is observed from where we came from, where we think we are, and where we are going based on those two backwards views, you now? But here I am. I’m in Dallas Texas after what seems like a million years and many adventures, have two children, now grown, have taught art for 21 years and worked for 40 years as a visual artist, showed initially at the Alternate Gallery many moons ago, was a part of the stable of artists at the prestigious Edith Baker Gallery for maybe 15 years or more and am presently and happily represented by the exceptional Craighead Green Gallery, 1011 Dragon Street Dallas, TX 75207. I am very lucky, indeed.
The road I have traveled on is a path forged with hard work but it is mainly lined with folks that saw me and my work and believed in both. I have been fortunate enough to have the support of these folks throughout the years and they have been friends, family, collectors, and the wonderful gallery owners that have given me the advice and direction to continue to make art. To say I’m grateful is an understatement when I think of the people that have surrounded me over these long years.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Obstacles/Challenges: Has it been a smooth road? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
But no, of course, it hasn’t been a smooth road. No, no of course not. Life just isn’t like that for anyone, I would imagine. We all have stories that involve deep crisis and concern and of course, they can and often do take us to our knees. Just like that. The deal is, is that once on our knees, we generally can find a breath, our footing, and eventually stand up to continue down our road, right? It’s what we do. When I am carving a frame, find a passage of a piece more difficult to complete, there are times of foot-stomping frustration and by the nature of my not getting to the end result as anticipated, my initial reaction is throwing my hands up. But here’s the deal. What I have learned in all the time I have been making and exhibiting work is that the hurdles are there not to stop me but to force my hand at problem-solving. So, this is what I do.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am an artist and a teacher. I think this is how most folks know me. The work I do is generally fairly large, at least bigger than me, is a combination of carving roofing paper, constructing wooden, carved frames, doors and/or installations, and printmaking. It’s not a particularly common work method or material use but it has served me well for more than half my life. I use power tools and traditional etching tools to score the tarpaper, paint it, draw through it, construct the images to a good size, sew the paper onto a stretched canvas and construct and carve wooden frames to accompany the central image. The ideas have evolved from the results of reading an entire set of 1957 encyclopedias where the minutia tallied up to a surprising equation for me and children’s tales which hold the same lessons of human exchange. With the reading of the encyclopedia, I saw that history repeated itself because the motivation behind the events stayed the same. And from 1986 on, the ideas for my work have grown from that rung on the ladder. Whether I am referencing children’s tales or history, the ideas were and are always about the cyclical exchanges in our history and present. In 2007/08 I became fascinated with economics, began a true love of studying the ideas surrounding the ebb and flow/rise and fall of exchange, power, and people, and since then have used this platform to fuel my work ever since. I can’t tell you why I’m so delighted to learn about these ideas but I truly am.
I’ve been grateful to have had many solo shows and have my work included in permanent collections of many Texas museums. In the last 10 years my adventure studying economics lead me to make a large body of work that was exhibited at Craighead Green Gallery (2013) and from that show, the Federal Reserve acquired a large piece for their permanent collection. I was later asked to speak at the Federal Reserve that year about these influences in my work. It was delightful and educational to be around such interesting sound folks with fascinating points of view. Among so many chapters for which I am so grateful, this chapter was one I was and am proud of.
We are all different from each other in a wide variety of ways. I work in carved tarpaper and carved wood. But what perhaps sets me apart from others is my work and my influences. As the years have flown by and my work has continued, my little head and my observations have also expanded. I have become passionate about history and economics to flesh out what I see as a repetitive natural narrative that I am very aware of and completely fascinated by. These observations include the fundamentals of collective exchange, in the microcosm and the macrocosm, and expanded, are the very floor to everything I understand about belief. So how I see the world is reflected in everything, everywhere: the universal necessity to struggle, climb, achieve, fall, land, and then to begin the entirety again is our history, it is nature, and it is us. In that, I am interested in this perpetual cycle might set me apart a little but in that, I am subject to the forces of this narrative, I am most certainly like everyone else.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
The Role of Luck: What role of luck (good luck or bad luck) played in your life and business?
And sometimes, it IS luck.
Of course, it’s the hard work as well, this I know. I truly know this all too well.
As a mother in both good and bad economic circumstances, I found myself having to invent doorways to my studio without a lot of tools to build them, but the choices were obvious, really. At the end of the day, I had to choose either to figure out a way to make the work I wanted to see AND be a 24 hour a day mom to two children. So, I did.
Sometimes necessity IS the mother of invention because what I found was that I could make work in “parts”. What did that mean? Well, I would prep paper and draw a “run” of hands, legs, birds, animals, foliage, shoes… whatever I thought I might eventually need to tell a story and these parts would stack up on the floor of my studio until I could construct (from one tiny increment of time to another) a big piece. While I didn’t have the time, of course, to contemplate my work in the studio, I COULD make pieces while I cooked, cleaned, drove to schools (kept paper in the car and sometimes carved on pieces while at stoplights… crazy but true) and those small and steadfast efforts built towards larger complex ideas and pieces. I was the mom that was drawing on the side of the field while my daughter was running in soccer.
And this “working in parts” became my go-to tool set for 35 years.
Today I continue to carve and paint tarpaper and carve wood, doors and construct installations to tell the stories I want to tell.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.denisemabrown.com
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Craighead Green Gallery,1011 Dragon StreetDallas, TX75207.214.855.0779
