Nancy D. Brown

gridgrrrl's picture
Neighborhood: East Bay
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My art practice is an ongoing study of order and entropy. I use photography, assemblage, and installation to investigate how time and context transform matter and meaning, negotiating the border between order and chaos. The grid is often an implied or explicit structure in my work.

My three-dimensional work owes a debt to post-minimalism and bricolage. Harvesting found, recycled, and re-purposed materials from my surroundings, I combine and arrange them to uncover unexpected relationships. This often produces slyly humorous or uncanny results. My palette tends to grays, black, and white, punctuated by brilliant color.

My processes include balancing, hanging, piercing, and leaning, accentuating the precarity and vulnerability of the work. The porous boundary between work and wall or site invites consideration of context and the ephemeral nature of matter. I favor these primary materials: utility marker flags, wire, fencing, plaster, and painter’s tape. While my manipulation of these materials is often minimal, requiring only simple hand tools, their ordinary meaning is altered completely.