Kinetic Matter: An Interview with Jackie Brown by Brookes Britcher
Kinetic Matter
An Interview with Jackie Brown by Brookes Britcher
Brookes Britcher interviews Jackie Brown for her October exhibit at Grizzly Grizzly, Kinetic Matter. This site-specific installation explores biological flux, living systems, and human manipulations of nature. Brown’s current installations are fueled by advances in bioengineering, and experiments that involve combining or altering basic components of natural forms.
In his writing collection ‘On Creativity’, physicist David Bohm articulates the need to explore the fertile place where the modes of thinking in science and the creative process intersect.
“…one has to be sensitive to the eternally changing differences that are actually to be observed within each thing, and to the unceasing emergence of new similarities and relationships across the boundaries of the various things.” (David Bohm)
Jackie Brown epitomizes this sentiment. With Kinetic Matter, she offers a dynamic imaginative space that transforms the gallery into a personal laboratory to explore her ever-changing biomorphic sculptures. In this world, the rational may contort into fantasy; the ominous into whimsy. She demands, like any good scientist, mathematician, chef or artist, that you must allow your mind the space to wander into imagination. There, you will be rewarded.
[Brookes Britcher]
Can you tell me about how the exhibition at Grizzly Grizzly came together?
[Jackie Brown]
A lot happened on-site once I was able to get in the space with the work. I tried to plan ahead but I shifted gears quite a bit once I started installing.
If I recall, the initial plan was to exhibit drawings?
I was originally thinking about sculptures and drawings together but I realized pretty quickly that it would be too crowded and I wouldn't be able to create a sculpture environment in quite the same way. Once I started getting the sculptures onto the walls I went into a frenzy of moving pieces around and working to take over the space with the forms. I love that the space is a bit narrow with high ceilings. I felt like the work could really come off the walls into the space and surround you on all sides. I also liked being able to let the work crawl up the walls and around the beams. It started to take on a life of its own from there.
It seems, from documentation of some of your previous installations, that the objects have had more room to "breathe" in the past. The space here seems to have informed the direction a bit more than in the past?
Definitely. I was surprised by how much I loved working in a more intimate space. The work always changes on site though and that's an important part of the process.
I really enjoyed the scale of the space in relation to what you crafted to the environment. You are forced to navigate around these objects in something more of an immersive experience. It almost felt scary in a way.
I can see that. The density of the work in the space allowed for a more intense experience. You have to be careful not to bump into things and they loom above you in a way that can be unsettling. I'm interested in those aspects but I also hope they are counterbalanced by a playful quality in the work.
The forms and colors themselves seem rooted in something familiar, yet foreign enough that you can’t comprehend.
I am always striving for that balance! Where the work seems familiar but is also strange and hard to place. That space between the known and the unknown.
I think the decision to omit title cards or a material list helps challenge the viewer to really make their own associations and retains the enigma.
I like that ambiguity too. It helps allow for a flight of the imagination.
What is the starting point for you imagining these forms?
There has been a ton of different starting points for this work over time. Early on I was sculpting the human figure and interested in making psychologically charged works that explored what it means to be alive. I started thinking about the systems of the body, breaking down the body, and abstracting it. My studio practice got more and more experimental and I started relating the systems of the body to other living systems in the natural world. I still see a lot of references to the human body in this work and for me, there's a push and pull between the physical and psychological. From there, I started looking at microscopic images and thinking about processes of change and transformation in the world around us
Would you consider what you're making now to be closer to an independent organism? Not a pure abstraction of something grounded in reality?
My hope is always for the work to take on a life of its own. Ideally, all of the different influences and sources filter through the work and allow it to become something else. Something more.
I think the acuity of the research and influences comes through, without lecturing the audience. I really enjoy how there is room for my imagination to intersect with the work.
That's wonderful to hear. There's always going to be a gap between the experience that I have making the work and the experience others having engaging with the work. Ultimately, I hope the work encourages people to look closely and to be curious and to let their imaginations run wild.
I used to have an AIR that would say, "If you make if for the most informed audience, it will always trickle down. But you can't go the other way.” If a doctor from UPenn came to the show and child on a class trip, they would be able to see and enjoy the value of it from different perspectives.
Yes! That's exciting to me. That anyone can explore the forms and surfaces and start to make connections. That's one of the things I love about abstraction.
As these installations, and the objects, evolve is there a timeline or a plan for how you approach that? Or is it more organic and reactive?
It happens fast and slow. I can't force it. The work has to evolve gradually through lots of trial and error but once the momentum builds it can start to move quickly.
These are not set objects. They physically come together from a series of various forms, materials, experiments?
That's right. The forms and configurations are always changing. I spent a lot of time connecting pieces on-site for Grizzly Grizzly and at the end of the exhibition I will physically cut and break the pieces apart. This iteration will become part of the history and evolution of the work.
Your studio and exhibition practice directly engages the broader content of the work?
Very much so. This way of working became a way to embody transformation and to engage with the processes of growth, movement, and expansion.
Are there different qualifiers for "success" in each of those stages? From casting to being playful with unfamiliar materials or in the final assembly?
Absolutely. For example, I don't want my hand to be too obvious in the work so I spend a great deal of time touching up with paint and epoxy on-site in the gallery. This took about two days for this exhibition. I prowl around the space with tiny brushes looking for exposed materials and obsessively work to transform them.
Without bumping into anything...
Right!
You noted that the genesis of the process to arrive at this work started by investigating very microsystems within the body. Are there macrosystems of growth/decay/adaptation that inform what the next rendition may be? For example, in Philadelphia we are dealing with a Spotted Lanternfly presence, continually debating gentrification of areas of the city and on and on. Do moments like these factor into your thinking, even potentially realized in an abstract manner?
I'm interested in that fine line between the micro and the macro. The way the circulatory system of the body can parallel a root system or a river delta. There's a ton of pattern and repetition in nature and once you start tuning into that you start making connections between systems on all different scales. The one drawing that I wish I had been able to include suggests outer space and kinetic matter in a more expansive macro way. I think that interplay with the sculptures would've been interesting.
Do you have an image?
Is drawing where you start?
Not at all. I always start with mushy malleable materials.
Ha!
(cont.) Drawing came later. As a way to explore depth and structure in a different way. The drawings influenced the more geometric forms in the sculptures and the interplay between the two has helped drive the work forward.
Have you ever entertained making the installation/creation of the work a collaborative effort with the audience? Over time, the audience adds, adjusts, etc. The exhibition is "alive".
I like the idea of bringing the viewer inside the creative process but then I would have to reveal the underbelly of the work and that would kill the magic a little bit.
It would.
I explored something along these lines through a virtual reality project that allowed users to combine 3D models of my sculptures into their own conglomerate forms. That was a collaboration with a former student, Laura Griffee, and it came from a desire for the audience to experience the process in a different way.
When something organic grows, it just keeps going.
That's so true. It's one of the challenges with this kind of work because it's never really done.
It is that dilemma that allows it to keep existing and generate something new.
I like that it's always in a state of becoming. That it's not static. But I've also entertained the idea of taking all of the parts and crushing them into a giant mass–just to end the madness.
Years ago I made a piece of thousands and thousands of gelato sample spoons–that I collected, washed and sorted by color. I had them stored in my parent’s basement. I got a call from my dad one day... "Can we get rid of these 40 bins of spoons?”
That's amazing! So, you know exactly what I'm talking about then!
Too well.
(cont.) Does that enter in to your thoughts? The installations seem to be getting larger and more complex. At some point I imagine you can no longer adapt it, but just house it?
For sure and at some point it doesn't need to get larger or more complex. There's a point where that won't necessarily add more to the conversation or challenge me to explore new territory.
Limitations create the most inventive adaptations. Evidenced by working in the smaller space at Grizzly Grizzly.
Absolutely. That was such a pleasant surprise about my experience with this installation.
The element I am drawn to in your work is that it exists in this liminal place of understanding and imagination, and both are required to coexist.
I love that. Thank you.
One aspect of the work I am curious about is the "classification" of the elements of the installations. They are all disparate parts that are fabricated, then come together. How do you classify them in studio?
Often the work stacked on top of each other in my studio and it’s very messy. I have boxes full of small parts, piles of what I call the linear elements, and it goes from there. For this exhibition, I focused on wall installation so I separated out all of the floor sculptures and ceiling sculptures.
I also classify some objects as the bulbous parts and some as the geometric parts. I am always looking for a balance between elements that suggest something malleable and elements that suggest something that has an underlying geometry and structure.
The construction does not start with a taxonomy of parts designed to convey a specific "organism"? Imagined or real.
This work combines three previous installations together so each one of those had its own visual language. Each one evolved through a series of installations where the work morphed and changed and combining the installations themselves was a way to take that potential for transformation a step further. Combining them to the point where I felt the work really started to become something new was a challenge that took about two years and my relationship to the parts shifted throughout.
The "origin" object, the object to start building off of has changed over the work?
It's different for every installation. For this installation the origin objects were the dark blue geometric forms that extend off of the wall.
We spoke before about micro/macro elements in the work. The closer I look, I start to see a landscape.
Nice. There are definitely elements that I think of as geological. I see the work as being flora, fauna, and mineral all at once. Some parts suggest the brain or inside the body, some are plant-like or rock-like, other elements have a creature quality or an industrial quality. I hope to blur boundaries between all of those things and to suggest that these things are melding together and taking on new life. I'm interested in this idea that nature is malleable–that raw material can continuously be restructured and adapted and that the boundaries between systems are porous.
On that note, would you ever consider altering the format you displayed the pieces in? For instance, as a fossil or specimen, encased somehow? Or should it always have space to suggest another growth spurt?
There's something intriguing there but my immediate hesitation is that encasing them wouldn't allow people to get close and explore the details and that it would add a preciousness to the work.
Containment might suggest a narrative that these are "invasive" in some way.
That's true. I think it has that now to some extent. At least in the sense that it can be hard to tell if the work is playful or menacing and I'm interested in that tension.
The bright colors seem like a warning.
Absolutely. At times they can seem like a warning but at times I think they also add something more whimsical and light hearted.
This past week, the Paris Zoological Park opened an exhibition displaying "The Blob". It is an ancient organism, brightly colored, has 720 sexes, no conventional brain, grows at astonishing rates, yet can solve problems. When it adds other forms of the same, the new form is downloaded with the solution to the problem without ever experiencing it. It regenerates when cut in half. Scientists cannot seem to determine or agree precisely what it is, or how it could behave in such a manner. In some respects, it looks like one of your pieces have come to life.
Is this a moment when the scope of nature validates your imagination and what you make?
Yes! I love that nature continues to surprise and astonish us. The sciences have revealed so much about the natural world but the rabbit hole just keeps going. I am also fascinated by how the playing field keeps shifting. Advances in genetic engineering are fraught with new possibilities that make the stuff of science fiction increasingly plausible. I love the idea of working with nature to shape and reimagine our future but it's also full of uncertainty and this was an important catalyst for wanting to splice my own imaginative systems together.
Brookes Britcher is multi-disciplinary artist based in Philadelphia and founder of the curatorial activity Adaptation (Philadelphia, PA). He has worked with various organizations, galleries, municipal agencies and communities to develop and execute unique creative projects around the United States. He received his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and his BS from Drexel University. He has (2) cats. One indoor. One outside (most of the time).
Jackie Brown explores our relationship to living systems through biomorphic drawings, sculptures, and installations that have been featured in exhibitions across the United States, including works at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the Ann Arbor Art Center, and The Delaware Contemporary. In 2018, Brown received a Maine Artist Fellowship and a Lighton International Artists Exchange Program Award to spend three months in the Netherlands as an Artist-in-Residence at the European Ceramic Work Center. She has also participated in residencies at Emmanuel College, the Archie Bray Foundation, The Pajama Factory, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. Brown received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and her BA from Hamilton College. She currently lives in Maine where she is the Marvin H. Green Jr. Assistant Professor of Art at Bowdoin College.