Today we’d like to introduce you to Krystle Brown.
Krystle, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I come from a working class Irish Catholic family, my house sat right on the border between Chelmsford and Lowell Massachusetts. My earliest memories of art making is when I was a toddler, getting into my sister’s markers and furiously scribbling on the walls, all of them. My mother would recall this years later and say that it was only natural that I would pursue visual arts. I was privileged to have supportive mentors in high school, from friends to teachers, that realized my talents in color and form, and encouraged me to consider to going to art school. But I almost didn’t. In fact, I almost didn’t even go to college, and not for a lack of academic ambition or success. It was the year before the housing crash of 2008 and my parents, always living pay-check pay-check, told me we were about to lose the house. I was getting acceptance letters back from various New England schools, while worrying if I would be homeless in just a few months’ time. I thought about joining the Navy to recreate my path towards a higher education that I so desired, knowing full well that the military was no place for me to be.
Through the grace of perhaps higher forces or just structural societal advantages, my family came out from being under water and I was accepted into Massachusetts College of Art and Design, the only state funded art school in the US. My parents, who barely graduated high school, did everything they could to get the loans they needed to help me through school. At MassArt, I found my place, or so I thought. I went from Illustration to a dual major in Painting and Art History, while also learning ceramics. I never felt quite as successful as my peers or as skilled. But, I graduated with Academic Honors and one of my piece’s getting the Vice President’s Award. The only thing I needed to improve was my confidence.
I graduated in 2012 and was immediately hired as a cake decorator at Oakleaf Cakes. I found that I was more inclined sculpturally, as I learned how to make gum paste figurines of people, animals, cars, and even buildings. From here, I helped to organize a collective printmaking shop, Iron Wolf Press, volunteered for the Boston Hassle, and became an artist resident at the Stonehouse Residency for the Contemporary Arts in Miramonte California for one month in 2014. From here, my work matured in concept and technique, and I focused on works on paper.
In 2016, I was admitted to the Master of Fine Arts Program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Through school, I was able to travel to Northern Ireland with the Montague Travel Grant, curated a first-year show with my fellow cohort, and gained a wealth of new skills and connections. My work shifted from a 2D focus to now video installation and performance practice. I graduated this May, receiving the Katherine Romero Graduating Student Award and successfully exhibited my thesis at the Aidekman Art Center at Tufts University.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
My works spans across many media and topics. The main drive behind my work is the observation and critique of the many ways the American Dream as failed most of the people in this country. I sew into my work motifs of late stage capitalism, mental health issues, identity, spirituality, and family stories. I am particularly sensitive to location through the studying of neighborhoods and how people function within them.
I have concerns about gentrification and thus who is “valued” within a community, a nation and why. These elements inform my work, challenge my process, and engage viewers to question their own unsteady place within American society. I use video installation with found objects in addition to performance to address the issues central to the work I create. The aesthetic ranges from carefully arranged objects, often invoking a shrine like appearance, to abject, sculptures incorporating rotting cakes and dust laden furniture.
I expose the technology of the video components to offer a juxtaposition between the “white trash” tchotchkes found from my parent’ home and the array of wires and cables that literally tie the media together. In performance, I embrace characters inspired from my family upbringing, mostly of the bitter, crass mother, forcing the audience to break bone china and have them glue it back together, or the snarky tease of a server, never giving the audience a piece of delicious cake and watching helplessly be thrown into the trash. Overall, I hope that viewers find how their position in our culture either privileges them or subjugates them against the American Dream/Nightmare.
Have things improved for artists? What should cities do to empower artists?
It is hard to know if conditions are harder or easier for artists, not having a first hand of being an artist from any time but now. I believe with the internet; more people are exposed to art and the ideas that art has to create a better world for all of humanity. It was provided a means to have art exposed to a massive, global audience. The internet is indeed a think tank for all artists to come together and use our own unique abilities and insights to move humanity forward. But with the increase of globalization and late stage capitalism, it is harder for artists to survive day to day.
The housing costs in cities like Boston have sky rocketed, forcing out artists and other working-class individuals away from supportive and dynamic communities. The cost of education is beyond reach for many Americans and immigrants, creating a two-tier society where the poor and shrinking middle class are kept in control with mis-information and fear. Now, more than ever, we need truth seekers and creatives to band together and get serious about fighting this rising tide.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
Right now, myself and several other artists from Tufts University are working on the Webster Court Project in Newton Massachusetts. This will feature on site installations, video, performances, and paintings within a Victorian home slated to be razed by the end of the year. We were graciously invited by the owner to create solo installations and collaborations within the home, responding to the architecture, the neighborhood, and the history of the home. The opening reception will be June 30th at 20 Webster Court, Newton. We would love to see you there.
Otherwise, going to exhibitions that I am featured in, film screenings, and purchasing artwork or prints is the best way to support myself or any other local artist in the Boston area. The Boston art scene is small but diverse, thriving, and bold. As the cost of housing and studio spaces rises, we all rely on the support of our local community to keep us making work in this beautiful city. My website is currently updating and here you will find some samples of my work at www.Krystlebrownart.com
Contact Info:
- Website: www.krystlebrownart.com
- Instagram: krystlebrown_art
- Other: https://vimeo.com/krystlebrown
Image Credit:
All images by Krystle Brown.
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