Sally Brown: mother earth feminist tribute drawings and prints

Rhoneymeade Botanical Center, September 2021

Inspired by Yves Klein’s Anthropometries (1960), I create body prints alternatively with feminist intent, as director, artist, and model, dedicated to women artists before and around me, in abstract, expressive forms reminiscent of inkblot tests. Using my body, my work initiates conversations on gender and body image, as well as my role as mother. I recognize similar cries from other women artists and that my frustrations and celebrations are not unique. I developed two series of tributes; one to feminist artists scripting their text alongside the prints with botanical prints to nod to our primal role in nature; and another to Mother Earth to recognize and embody original goddess-and feminine-admiring societies. Including physical botanical objects, I positively align my body with nature. In the Mother Earth series I script contrasting words to implicate the duality that can be living, feeling and being in a woman’s body. Mother Earth also references my role that I cherish as a literal mother, as well as question the dual socially imposed character of “what [or how] I should be” a mom. While the idea of being a mother is central to much of my work, I continue to work through the challenges of what it’s like to be a mother who is an artist.

These drawings are from my Feminist Tribute series that I started late in 2018 and continue to create including body prints and drawings. My drawings are quick and playful self-portraits exploring both my own womanhood and self through my body as well as paying honor to all of the women and feminist artists before and around me. The mini versions of the art in the background are all artwork that has inspired or impacted me and/or my work in some way whether directly or indirectly (you can read the names of the artists on the drawing). This particular group includes reproductions of botanical works. I intentionally leave them raw and unfinished to bring a grounded result, challenging the traditional high-art pristine, golden-framed works that, to me, produce a distance between viewer and artwork. My works, I hope, are intimate, personable, playful and connect to the viewer as just another (sensual) person, doing inner work, but not alone.

https://sallydeskins.wixsite.com/feministart

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Bio:

Sally Brown is an artist, curator and writer currently based in Morgantown. Her artwork including drawing, painting and performance, explores womanhood, motherhood and the body. She has exhibited her work in spaces nationally and in the UK. She has won two awards for illustration for Intimates and Fools and Leaves of Absence, both with poetry by Laura Madeline Wiseman. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, Women's Art Journal and Artslant, among others. She has curated group shows in Omaha, Nashville, Pittsburgh and Morgantown. She holds a Bachelor of Arts-Studio Art, a Master of Public Administration and Master of Arts- Art History and Feminist Theory.