Jackie Brown | Fault Lines and Foundations | Rebecca Lawrence Gallery Entry | Artist Talk: Saturday, May 23, 3-4 PM
Exhibition Statement | Jackie Brown’s sculptures explore the shifting processes of growth and transformation that connect human life with the living systems around us. Working primarily in clay, she uses 3D printing and mold-making as starting points for experimental forms that invite reflection on how we perceive and relate to the natural world. The sculptures hover between vitality and fossilization. They stretch and reach even as they calcify and decay, suggesting roots, bones, or remnants of once-living structures. They inhabit a charged in-between state that is simultaneously harmonious and tense, malleable and near breaking. In this ambiguity lies their power, reflecting broader environmental and psychological conditions marked by instability, adaptation, and interdependence. Together, these works reflect the heart of Brown’s practice: reverence for living systems, attention to materiality, and a fascination with the processes of growth and change that define existence. Her sculptures invite us to witness how time, force, and fragility shape both the natural world and our inner landscapes. Brown’s work challenges us to consider the delicate interplay of creation and decay, of persistence and impermanence, reminding us that both ecological and human systems are defined by resilience, adaptation, and interconnectedness. In their quiet intensity, her sculptures offer a meditation on being, becoming, and the subtle transformations that continuously reshape life.
Biography | Jackie Brown’s work invites reflection on how we perceive and relate to the natural world. She exhibits widely, including recent sculpture at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and the Indianapolis Art Center. Brown is the recipient of a Maine Artist Fellowship and has participated in numerous art residency programs, including the European Ceramic Work Center in the Netherlands and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. Brown lives on a creek among the hemlock and white pines of Maine. She teaches at Bowdoin College, where she is currently Chair of the Visual Arts Department and oversees the sculpture area. She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BA from Hamilton College.
Artist Statement At the heart of Jackie Brown’s work is a love of materiality and an endless curiosity about what it means to be alive. This is fueled by a hands-on sculpture practice that embraces experimentation and discovery. Brown is drawn to raw materials like clay and plaster that have limitless potential to morph, mold, and mimic the world around us. As a starting point, she often generates many individual parts and explores combining them into different configurations. This process of constructing larger wholes from smaller, mutable components mirrors the flux and interdependence that are central to living systems. At its core, her work is ultimately about transformation and reflects the constant negotiation of growth, decay, and renewal that shapes all life. Through abstraction and forms that can seem both strange and familiar, she encourages us to reimagine what we think we know and stay open to what might be possible.
IG: @j_a_c_k_i_e_b_r_o_w_n
