短暂的艺术是一个大的合作

2017-18年度Victor E. 小Ferrall. Endowed Artist-in-Residence returned to her alma mater to christen the old Alliant Energy building, which is undergoing a major renovation into the college’s new student union, 娱乐中心, 体育设施. The fabric sculpture was suspended from a moving crane and displayed for a limited time in April inside the Powerhouse, 哪一个现在是建筑工地. (The building is expected to be completed by the fall of 2019.)
出生于蒙大拿州密苏拉.纽约布鲁克林市(Brooklyn).Y.-based Browder is known for producing large-scale fabric installations that are unique to a site and usually designed to drape dramatically across building exteriors. “Power Plant 贝洛伊特” was Browder’s first interior installation and her first kinetic one.

她的工作, 引人注目的色彩和图案引人注目的, 已经在国内和国际上展出了吗, but her creative process is what best defines her art. Browder works for weeks—sometimes months— with people in the locations where an installation will occur to curate fabric and sew pieces from start to finish, inviting residents of all ages and skill levels to help donate, 销, and sew fabric to create a final piece that usually stays up for less than a week. She even teaches amateurs how to sew and encourages people to come to sewing sessions frequently. 她经常访问当地的学校，与学生们一起缝纫, wearing what she calls her “sewing lady” round glasses and clothing as colorful as her artwork.
Browder’s obsession with participatory art is a breath of fresh air in a contemporary climate of social-media-fueled non-cooperation. She wants to celebrate the identity of the Artist (“with a capital A,她强调说), while nudging everyone else to interrogate that identity in their own lives.

“When you call yourself “an artist,” a huge change happens,她说。. “Our society believes that artists are allowed to do whatever they want. 你有这种自由.”

Browder’s 贝洛伊特 connection came through Warren Palmer. The recently retired professor and chair of the economics department is a fellow Missoulan who encouraged Browder to attend the college.

毕业后, she received her Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then taught at the Art Institute of Chicago for the next seven years before realizing she “just needed to do art.” Browder credits 贝洛伊特 with hel销g her find her voice as an artist. 作为她1998年毕业项目的一部分, she enlisted the help of the college’s public relations department, which put out a press release announcing the arrival of a prestigious traveling art show by a famous SoHo-based artist named David Felitianos. 但他完全是布劳德编造出来的, 为拍照而打扮, 他甚至编了一个讲座来介绍“他的”工作, 这是她自己做的. 当地报纸刊登了这篇报道.

“It was just fake news to the nth degree,” Browder says with a satisfied smirk.

“The goal was to talk about what happens when you call yourself an artist. What does it mean in our society when you name yourself that? 谁决定谁“出名”??” Browder has taken that question with her throughout her career, working out of her 400-square-foot studio in Brooklyn for the last 10 years. She’s amassed an impressive following on Instagram (almost 3,@browdertown下的000名粉丝), and her textile work has taken her all over the world. Her large-scale installations were born out of proving herself to the unyielding world of New York artists—which historically legitimizes male artists 更多的 than females. “当我刚开始在纽约工作的时候, many people thought painting was the top and fabric was craft,她说。. “我一直在与这种刻板印象作斗争. 作为对那个的拒绝, 我开始报道建筑，就像, 去你们的, 我要做得尽可能大.’”

虽然她的工作最终是巨大的, Browder starts small with locally donated materials for her installations, 收集尽可能多的各种颜色, 风格, 纹理, 和大小. Most donations for the Powerhouse came from bins set up around the city of 贝洛伊特. 一位退休的Alliant能源员工, 卡尔·威德尔, 甚至和他分享了他的旧电厂制服, 上面有愈合的补丁和细小的烧伤孔, 用作织物. 在两周的缝纫期间, Browder promoted public “sewing days” that popped up around the city. Volunteers gathered to sew at the Merrill Community Center, 伯洛伊特公共图书馆, 贝洛伊特纪念高中, 还有伯洛伊特学院, including in Professor of art Mark Klassen’s sculpture classes in the Wright Museum of Art.

在缝纫课上, Browder developed friendships with those who showed up regularly, 比如伯洛伊特本地人乔伊斯·罗南, 谁参加了每次会议, 经常是一整天. Ronan’s love of sewing and quilting has been a lifelong hobby. She received frequent shout-outs by Browder on her Instagram feed, and both have agreed to a reunion in New York in the future.
作为一名上世纪90年代的伯洛伊特学生, Browder recalls the Alliant Energy plant as an alluring but obscure building. “You would drive past it or see it so often because it was right next door and wonder ‘what’s functioning there? 里面是什么样子的?’” Browder said it made her excited to do a piece in the old power plant because “it was a transition from old 贝洛伊特 to new 贝洛伊特.”
“Power Plant 贝洛伊特” was viewed by groups of hard-hat wearing spectators in the Powerhouse over three days in April before it moved to the college’s Sanger Center for the Sciences. Many who came to see the brightly colored work of art also had a hand in creating it, 而布劳德也不会有别的选择. Her journey as an artist is about bringing everyone else along.

Kelsey Rettke ' 15是一名自由撰稿人
在贝洛伊特.