Gratia Brown

Gratia Brown

www.gratiaworks.com

Artist Statement:

The oldest known fragment of ceramic is a small thing, roughly triangular, a yellow brown dust color - unassuming.  This fragment holds many marks: on one side along the rim there are decorative marks - dots in a line perhaps made by impressing a stick into the wet clay.  The surface blackened by the unmistakable touch of flame. Fingerprints and pinching texture appear where the artist coaxed shape and function from the clay.   

Fragments represent to me these hidden narratives that connect us to events and people.  Fragments are cropped from a resolved place and form. Edges and contours hint at the original object’s function and the events that led to fragmentation. Fragments become a talisman binding the viewer to unknown people, intentions, and events.  

My work celebrates the characteristics of the fragment - mobile, poetic, irregular, unstable, and precarious in their lack of resolution.