I went to Deborah Brown’s studio yesterday to chat a bit and take a photo. I ended up staying and talking with her for over an hour, about her recent appointment to Community Board 4, gentrification, the Bushwick art community, real estate, renovations, various Southern Cone dictatorships, and more. Her studio is a former church (among many other things), flooded with light from all the skylights and windows, lined with her eye-popping paintings and punctuated with some of her travel acquisitions, the latest a cowhide rug still creased from the journey to New York from Buenos Aires.
Tell me about your art: I am interested in nature and culture, in how we interact with the natural world and view it through the lens of our culture. My most recent work depicts ambiguous or disturbing encounters between animals and humans that result from the collision of the natural world with our technological conquest of it. In my paintings, contemporary events provide the tableau for specific animal encounters that I imagine. I get my ideas from firsthand experience and the media. I collect images of ecological subjects from newspapers, books, and magazines, and place them in contexts that I think are provocative, poignant, and ambiguous. These paintings are the result.
A second aspect of my work is public art, in which my paintings are fabricated for permanent installation in public spaces using mosaic. New Yorkers will be familiar with a series of glass mosaic murals I did that were commissioned in 1993 by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the Houston Street subway station in Manhattan, in which underwater creatures are swimming thriugh the flooded subways. I am currently working on the public artwork for a new animal shelter that is under construction in Memphis, Tennessee.
How long have you been in Bushwick?: Two years.
Why did you move to Bushwick?: After living in Manhattan for 25 years, I lost my studio when we relocated within Manhattan (where we still live). At the same time, my niece rented a 3 week sublet in Bushwick, and my husband and decided to drive her and her stuff to her apartment. We got totally lost driving around the area, which appeared to me to be designed to thwart outsiders from coming into the neighborhood. It was a hot evening in June. The fire hydrants were open, and kids were out in the street playing in the streets, accompanied by loud reggaeton. A typical Bushwick summer evening. I had been all over Brooklyn but not to Bushwick, and it looked like a very tough scene. I insisted that we go to dinner at NE Kingdom, because I had heard artists talking about it as the one nice restaurant there. By the end of dinner, I had decided to buy a garage in Bushwick and renovate it to use as my studio. One month later I owned a vacant, two-floor factory building on Stockholm Street, and the fun began.
What’s your favorite part of living in Bushwick?: I like the mix of people, the authenticity. I like the gritty landscape, the pockets of beauty, the eccentricity of the architecture, the clash of cultures and customs, the sense of possibilities. I like my neighbors. I love being part of the artistic community and getting to know other artists working here. I love what the organizers of Arts in Bushwick are doing. I like BushwickBK.
I also like that we have built and opened an orthodontic clinic called “Yo! Braces” on the ground floor of our building. That project has involved us in the lives of the broader Bushwick community. In the last two years, I have met with and given presentations about our clinic to Community Board 4, RSBCC, day care centers, merchants’ associations, and health fairs in Bushwick. I have met lots of people. I feel a part of Bushwick and its future, and I see myself as a potential bridge between the different communities there.
Debbie is a fascinating, engaging woman and I could have stayed for hours, but my schedule forced me to cut short my visit. Her studio is off the typical Bushwick art path, but I highly recommend a visit this weekend.
Deborah Brown (BOS listing)
322 Stockholm
bushwicknative June 8th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I visited Deborah on Saturday and it was well worth the trip. Her art reflects exactly as she stated above and I know she is a true believer in the community.
I was impressed because I had on my Black Phoenix shirt from last years event and she said she remembered I had been there with my daughter a year ago.
We again chatted about the old days in Bushwick ( 50s 60s) and how the neighborhood seems to be changing by the month.
That space is usually my first stop as it is alittel away from most of the others but a great place to start. With the growth in the festival this year I hope that rather than being on the edge Stockholm street moves more to the middle of the Studios that are open.