Brad Brown uses unusual approaches in making his work. Over a period of several years he worked and re-worked a group of drawings using charcoal, graphite, tea and olive oil. He smudged, rubbed, tore and recombined the drawings which became the Look Stains series.
Brown made his first prints, Drifting Low, at Shark’s in July 2002. He continued his exploration of mystery and chance in his 2005 monoprints, By and By. The By and By monoprints were exhibited in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver in 2005.
He recently completed a new group of colorful monotypes at the Shark’s studio in Holualoa, Hawaii. This group of monotypes is titled ‘Okina. The ‘okina is the Hawaiian representation of the glottal stop. It is a separation of doubles.
The monotypes in the ‘Okina series are doubles; the prints are divided into upper and lower halves. Brown worked on two plates simultaneously. Sometimes the images on the plates were mark-for-mark copies of one another; other times one image was a riff or a variation on the other. The resulting image was hidden until the upper and lower plates were run though the press. The plates met in the center of the page in the seam, or joint. Where the plates met at the joint there was a kiss; this became literally the crux of the matter.
Brad Brown has received grants and awards from the California Arts Council, the Ruth Chenven Foundation, the Western States Art Federation and the Vermont Studio Center.
His work is in the collections of MoMA, New York, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Palace of Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA; Jundt Museum of Art, Spokane, WA; Arkansas Museum of Art, Little Rock, AK and the Boise Art Museum, ID.
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