Opening: b.brown: Ceramic Sculptures

Ceramic artist b. brown has been working with clay for 30 years, her process guided by curiosity and a constant cycle of searching, questioning and learning. She sees clay as a medium that invites the exploration of pairings that may seem antithetical: discipline and rule-breaking, methodology and abandon, refinement and elaboration. Her studio practice is rich in creative articulations of these charged tensions, and she sees honing her technique as a kind of communion with the material that deepens her connection to it.

brown has never been one to conform to convention. Growing up between Los Angeles and New York City, her artistic history is varied, including forays into dance, film, design, and production ceramics, and she challenged expectations in each medium she pursued. All of these explorations have ultimately influenced her current work in ceramics, giving her work a depth of intuitive understanding of substance and motion. Her studio practice has always been rooted in form, or, as she describes it, “the architecture of vessels.” Now, she is focused on crafting large-scale sculptural vessels that challenge and interrogate conventional form and presentation. This exhibition builds on her 2024 show at Hecho a Mano, titled A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky, which featured a series of large clay vessels in earthen hues that carried recurring shapes and patterning, revealing a language all their own. In her upcoming show, brown continues to explore these symbologies and the dialogue between objects, “pulling elements of its language forward into new work, while also returning to certain shapes I had previously set aside.”