{"id":39032,"date":"2018-10-02T17:30:45","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T23:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=39032"},"modified":"2018-11-04T15:46:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-04T21:46:00","slug":"retrace-linnie-browns-puzzle-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/retrace-linnie-browns-puzzle-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Retrace: Linnie Brown\u2019s Puzzle Project"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""Need<\/a>

“Need Only to Reattach,” mixed media on panel, 2018, 24″ x 24″<\/p><\/div>\n

Linnie Brown\u2019s approximately two dozen pieces in her show Retrace<\/em> at A Gallery, with titles like \u201cOften Requires Additional Building,\u201d \u201cNeed Only to Reattach,\u201d and \u201cThe Line Between Now and Then,\u201d make you think of nothing more than \u2014 what if all these paintings, with their flanges and tabs and connecting lines and outlined flat, mostly boxy, shapes, could become three-dimensional?<\/h4>\n

These would be the mobiles of all mobiles, dangling in this very (indoor) courtyard in A Gallery where they are now displayed.<\/h4>\n

The artist seems to have picked up the lament of The Lost Draftsman, the architect who once manned a drafting table but mainly now presses buttons on computers; The Lost Seamstress, the woman who once put tissue-paper patterns of her choice on fabric of her choice on a long cutting table to make a garment, but now listlessly yanks at rows of hangers in a store.<\/h4>\n

Drifting through these, too, is the tune of the Lost Japanese, in a kimono: through all the pieces here is the splendor and mixture of almost silken colors and sanded multifarious textures and patterns the Japanese kimonos bear.<\/h4>\n

The cutting table for a new kimono must have held, like these paintings, many almost purely rectangular pieces, to be basically one border attached to another then drawn in by a sash. In Brown\u2019s work there are a great deal of ribbon-like narrow lines, often filled with pattern; these suggest, even, the kimono sash, or fabric strips left over from pattern pieces.<\/h4>\n

Is this art that longs for a project, and perhaps its beauty is the longing, rather than the completion? Or is this art that is, per Brown\u2019s artist statement, \u201cthe mapping of place and memory,\u201d i.e., a collecting of impressions from places\/experiences already happened, being preserved?<\/h4>\n
\""Determined<\/a>

“Determined to Coincide,” mixed media on panel, 2018, 12″ x 12″<\/p><\/div>\n

In truth they would be strange mobiles: many pieces reaching out for a waiting, comforting, symmetrical side, and finding only a gap or a distant surprise shape, gaps that would spell doom for a trapeze artist reaching out and not finding the hoped-for, waiting rung. Mobiles asymmetric in countless ways.<\/h4>\n

Change\/joy brought about by successful project completion seems eminent in many paintings\u2019 titles: \u201cTo Eliminate Possible Loss,\u201d \u201cTwice Around a Resistant Detail,\u201d \u201cCarry the Heaviest Walls,\u201d and \u201cThe Position to Fit Around.\u201d Carry on, these titles seem to say: complete the project.<\/em><\/h4>\n

All include whites (translucent, mottled whites, like rice-powdered women\u2019s faces in Japan, or pale tissue-paper of patterns); and always, blacks (suggesting the black of Japanese hair or the even blacker shiny long hairpins seen in Japanese women\u2019s upbound hair in old paintings and drawings? Or the dark underside of the drafting table, the dark underside of the dressmaker\u2019s cutting table, even the darkness of our brains, where memory is kept?) Again, argument between the past and the constructs of future.<\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

“Begin with Exiisting Surfaces,” mixed media on panel, 2018, 36″ x 36″<\/p><\/div>\n

Most of these pieces are on custom-made wooden panels, with a rich pale sanded birch-like grain; a set of them are on thick, immaculate and creamy-white paper, framed in ebony-black frames, behind glass. A stitching motif runs through many; in some, the stitches are drawn or painted; in others, the stitching is by hand, by the artist, with real thread.<\/h4>\n

Two large works in particular stand out, because of color: one because of its rich ultra-aquamarine-ness (\u201cBegin with Existing Surfaces\u201d) \u2014 in contrast to Brown\u2019s more ubiquitous denimy blue, which permeates most of the work, either as a denim-blue sky background or as an almost oceanic surge of darker denim blue, as in \u201cTo Mark a Boundary.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\""Not<\/a>

“Not Structurally Sound,” mixed media on panel, 36″ x 58,” 2018<\/p><\/div>\n

The other color-outstanding large piece, \u201cNot Structurally Sound,\u201d is one of the very few with red: this red of such clearness and signaling quality you immediately think of flags. Flags, with their almost childish simplicity of shape and color, simple to recognize clearly at a distance, are surely, at least at first glance, considerably simpler than Brown\u2019s paintings. Yet, deep down, flags are complex: they super-contain opposing currents: backward and forward patterns of arguments and histories and future hopes: all happening in the actual puzzle-piece land-pattern each owns.<\/h4>\n

At last, this painting with red, suggesting flags\u2019 reds, solves it; Linnie Brown\u2019s paintings are perhaps equally about past and future projects. As in a flag, in Brown\u2019s paintings, there are crosscurrents, of both future and past, histories in progress and projects going forward: dying and living and <\/em>remembering, clothes and fabric and the buildings and ships, countries and flags \u2014 all a project, all the same.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Retrace: Linnie Brown<\/em>, A Gallery<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through November 3. Artist Reception Friday, October 19, 6-9 pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linnie Brown\u2019s approximately two dozen pieces in her show Retrace at A Gallery, with titles like \u201cOften Requires Additional Building,\u201d \u201cNeed Only to Reattach,\u201d and \u201cThe Line Between Now and Then,\u201d make you think of nothing more than \u2014 what if all these paintings, with their flanges and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1568,"featured_media":39036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[554,339],"class_list":["post-39032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-a-gallery","tag-linnie-brown"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-14 07:12:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/BROWN_NotStructurallySound_mixedonpanel_2018_36x58.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39032"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39678,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39032\/revisions\/39678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}