Bucks is featuring the work of guest artist, Emily Brown, in a show called “From the Ground Up: Drawings by Emily Brown”.
The art show will take place at the Hicks art center now until October 17. Brown stated that she lived in Maine and was “born and raised mainly in Pennsylvania countryside”. She has gone to numerous art schools, received various awards since 1999, and has been featured in solo exhibitions since 2000.
Fran Orlando, the director of the Artmobile-Hicks Art Center Gallery, said that picking Brown for the show was an “easy decision”. She continued to say that Brown’s work is fabulous and “fascinating on so many levels, with the gallery surrounding you, you can be transported to where she was, or a sense of where she was”.
Brown uses sumi, a traditional East Asian medium that uses varying combinations of ink and water, to make her work. In contrast, her work is not traditional for her medium. Her nature pieces “bring us into the experience of seeing. Looking down, we see the piece of ground we stand on and where we are. Looking up and outward we see the world around us” according to the exhibit pamphlet.
The Bucks website wrote that pieces in the show feature different views of landscapes such as “views looking downward at the rocky, weedy ground, paired with views looking outward at the natural world of shaggy forests, fields, snags”.
The exhibit pamphlet compares the experience viewing Brown’s art with going on a hike. The large size of most of the pieces makes it easy to get lost in the landscape.
Brown stated in the pamphlet that she “ could not have done the studio pieces without the primary experience of being out there (in the landscape) and absorbing it”.
She tries to capture movement in her landscapes and describes this in the pamphlet, “Things in nature are ever changing. The nature and direction of light, movement, growth/blossoming/disintegration of living things… Making a picture that represents change is a challenge. I hope that the shifts in tone within areas and marks keep the viewer’s eye moving, and observations flowing”.
Brown achieves complex tones by “building an image out of marks” according to Director Orlando. Orlando explained that “the variety of tones that you see is based on the amount of water with the ink” and Brown “starts off light and builds the depth using less water with the ink”.
Brown will be here for artist talk on Wednesday September 30 from 3-4 p.m. at Penn Hall room 257. The gallery reception is on the same day from 5 to 7 p.m. with the curator’s talk, hosted by Susan Hagan, at 6:10 p.m. Hagan is an art critic and teacher in the art department. The artist talk and reception are free and open to the public.
Orlando encourages students to bring their family and friends. She stated, “I would hope the students, faculty, and staff see it (Hicks Gallery) as a place to come and gather or just have some quiet time alone, especially at a calming show like this”.