MASON CITY – The MacNider Museum will feature a craft show winner starting Friday.
Gratia Brown, of Cedar Rapids, was awarded Best in Show at the opening reception of Iowa Crafts: 41 on Saturday, December 7, 2013. Brown won for her hand-built assembled ceramic artwork, Triumph of Foam Over Mertar. As prize for her win, Brown was awarded a solo exhibition in the Charles H. MacNider Art Museum’s Center Space Gallery. Her exhibition, Vestige and Facture, opens Friday, August 15, at 9 a.m. and will run through Saturday, November 8.
Brown creates mixed media sculpture using clay and found objects. She states “Clay makes permanent the gesture of pinches, pushes, rips, and tears – capturing the moments of contact between the mind and hand as physical matter is shaped in reaction to the perception of the external world. Found objects are absorbed into structures and surfaces to bring a contrasting line and implied narrative to compositions.”
“My work explores the tension between the abstract internal dialogue of thoughts, memories and the physicality of the external world. I use the ceramic process’ ability to capture movement and gesture in time to mimic the meandering of thought. Constant, obsessive, reexamining and structuring of surfaces and forms mirror the reflection and examination one undergoes while reviewing patches of information from dreams, thoughts and emotions.” – Gratia Brown
Admission to the Charles H. MacNider Art Museum is free.