“Neutrally Buoyant,” an archival pigment print by Teresa Booth Brown, will be among the works featured in the exhibition.
The Cathy and Jesse Marion Art Gallery’s second fall exhibition, “The Neo-Quietism Project,” will include 30 archival pigment prints by Colorado artist and educator Teresa Booth Brown.
The artist developed the project with the support of the Marion International Fellowship for Visual and Performing Arts as the 2019-20 recipient of the award.
The exhibition will be on display from Oct. 17 through Nov. 20. In lieu of a reception due to the COVID regulations, Ms. Booth Brown will explain the project in a video included in the exhibition.
Funding for “Teresa Booth Brown: The Neo-Quietism Project” is provided by the Cathy and Jesse Marion Endowment Fund of the Fredonia College Foundation and Friends of Rockefeller Arts Center.
Booth Brown is best known for her use of collage in oil painting, mixed-media drawings, and printmaking. Marion Art Gallery Director Barbara Räcker said the artist’s collage materials come from a wide range of sources including fashion magazines, discarded teaching materials, and obsolete textbooks. Strong color, abstracted imagery, and architectural geometry distinguish her work.
Among the influences of “The Neo-Quietism Project” prints are the Buddhism and Hinduism philosophies of quietism; the abstract and austere style of the early 20th century Russian Constructivism art movement; and scientific illustrations of physics, mechanical, and geological principles.
“This project presumes that this restorative, quietist potential is to be found in the abstract, non-representational nature of all art,” Booth Brown said. “The critic Thomas Hess remarked in 1951 that ‘Abstract art has always existed, but until this century it never knew of its existence.’ Hiding in plain sight within representational pictures, no matter how loud or insistent their messages, are aesthetic qualities that calm rather than fuel the churning of ideas. I intend to identify and explore ways of painting to create a second register of experience, that of a direct physical response to formal qualities. A cultivation of this faculty connects viewer to self-knowledge and ultimately grounds them in a reality lost in the chatter of discourse.”
Booth Brown studied at Reed College and Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Ore.; Bennington College in Bennington, Vt.; and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. She continues a teaching tradition which helps artists to identify and develop unique and individual directions in their own work. Her teaching focus also includes making art experiences and art-making activities which are accessible to everyone.
Booth Brown is the Artist Programs Coordinator for the Aspen Art Museum, teaches at the Pitkin County Jail, and is adjunct faculty at the Denver Botanic Garden’s School of Art. She has been awarded residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, the American Academy in Rome, the Campo Artist Colony in Uruguay, and La Napoule Art Foundation in France. In 2014 and 2017 she collaborated with master printer Bud Shark in his Lyons, Colo., workshop to create and publish two color lithographs with digital collage and chine collé. She is represented by Michael Warren Contemporary Gallery in Denver.
For more information about the exhibition, contact Ms. Räcker via email or 716-673-4897. Gallery hours are: Tuesday through Thursday from noon to 4 p.m., Friday and Saturday from noon to 6 p.m., Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., and by appointment.
The Marion Art Gallery is located on the ground level of Rockefeller Arts Center and is most easily accessed from the Symphony Circle side of the building. Please be aware that COVID-19 state protocols are in place. Visitors must wear a facemask or face covering and practice social distancing.
