{"id":29495,"date":"2015-08-06T20:58:33","date_gmt":"2015-08-07T02:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=29495"},"modified":"2020-07-27T15:56:23","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T21:56:23","slug":"linnie-brown-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/linnie-brown-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Linnie Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"linnebrownbl\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It goes on all over our country \u2014 housing developments sprout up on the outer rims of our suburban areas, attracting young homeowners looking for the amenities of suburban living along with the promise of open spaces. In a few years time, though, those fields and prairies are consumed by new development, so that a young family once living a semirural existence may quickly find itself packed into the middle of suburban sprawl.<\/p>\n

Utah artist Linnie Brown knows this experience well.<\/p>\n

Brown grew up in just such a neighborhood, in Hillsboro, Ore., a town 20 miles outside of Portland that was once on the edge of the countryside. \u00a0Over the past three decades, however, companies like Intel have established campuses in the area (their Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro was a farm recently owned by, yes, a Mr. Jones) and Brown\u2019s childhood home has become part of a dense suburban area.<\/p>\n

Something similar is happening to her in Utah. When she and her husband first settled in Lehi over a decade ago, their neighborhood on the east side of I-15 bordered an area of farms and open space that to the north extended as far as Traverse Mountain (which at the time was home to little more than jackrabbits and hang gliders). Over the past decade, and especially in the past few years, her almost-rural subdivision has been surrounded by new developments, which now extend north of a very busy SR 92; where once the Lehi Block Co. was the only business you could see from the highway, large office complexes like the Adobe building are sprouting up along what is being called “Silicon Slopes.”<\/p>\n

Since Brown\u2019s work as an artist has always been concerned with the intersection of the natural and the humanmade, she has paid close attention to the type of suburban sprawl that has grown, metamorphosing around her on a daily basis. It is the central focus of her new work now on display at Art Access.<\/p>\n