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Hilary Brace

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Hilary Brace
Born1956
Seattle, WA
NationalityAmerican
Alma materWestern Washington State University, University of California Santa Barbara
Known forCharcoal drawings on mylar
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship, California Arts Council Fellowship
Websitewww.hilarybrace.com

Hilary Brace is an American artist based in Santa Barbara, CA who makes drawings, photographs and prints. Brace is most widely known for her charcoal on Mylar (polyester film) drawings of cloud-inhabited landscapes, which she first exhibited in a solo exhibition in 1997 [1].

Education and Representation

Hilary Brace received her MFA degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1985 and her BFA (1983) and BA degrees (in Painting and Art History) from Western Washington State University in Bellingham, WA. Over the past 25 years Brace has exhibited her work regularly in both public institutions and commercial galleries. She is the recipient of numerous national and regional awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (2006), National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1993), California Arts Fellowship, and two grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Her work is represented in Los Angeles by Craig Krull Gallery and in New York by Edward Thorp Gallery. Braces charcoal on Mylar drawings are included in numerous private and public collections including the Boise Art Museum, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art and Western Washington Sate University Art Museum.

Charcoal Drawings

In reviewing Hilary Brace’s charcoal on Mylar drawings for the New York Times, Ken Johnson wrote, “once in a while you come across an art of such refined technique that it seems the product of sorcery more than human craft”[2]. Despite the photographic veracity of her technique, Brace composes her images without premeditation, through an explorative process that allows them to unfold in unanticipated directions. Her current smaller charcoal drawings, along with her earlier drawings, are made in a reductive manner by first darkening the entire surface with charcoal and then removing the medium with various hand-made tools, allowing the image to emerge through chance and intuition [3]. For works of somewhat larger scale and greater complexity, Brace creates studies in a similarly explorative manner while she refers to photographs of sculptural tableaus and other diverse means of garnering information. Consequently, these recent works show an even more remarkable use of technique, as they are more deceptively photographic.

Brace’s fictional spaces depict a secret and ethereal world of vaporous forms, cavernous crevices and roiling clouds that evoke primordial memories and psychic spaces. Her subjects appear to be in a fluid state of transformation that suggests a continuity between states of matter -- solid, liquid or gaseous – [4] yet her images make such impossible places seem tangible. Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Knight stated that “the feeling is less one of romantic yearning for something up there, out of reach, than it is full immersion in something stunning, primordial and elusive but immediately at hand.” [5] For all their vastness and grandeur, Brace’s drawings are relatively small and intimate. As Leah Ollman observed in Art and America, these drawings “suggest a vastness at the opposite end of the experiential spectrum, scaled more to the imagination than to the body. What Brace’s stunning little drawings do is put those two realms– the private and the cosmic – within reach of each other.”[6]

Photographs

Brace’s photographs of sculptural tableau, which she began producing in 2005, have been exhibited in a number of Southern California venues [7], including a solo exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery[8] and are held in the collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art[9].

Exhibitions

Selected Solo and Group Exhibitions of drawings from the past 15 years

2010 Craig Krull Gallery, solo exhibition, Santa Monica, CA
2010 Altimetry, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2010 50 Very Small Drawings, Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, PA
2009 West Coast Drawings, Davidson Galleries, Seattle, WA and Koplin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (catalogue)
2008 Ten: Gifts of SBMA PhotoFutures, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA (catalogue)
2008 Edward Thorp Gallery, solo exhibition, New York, NY
2007 New Directions in American Drawing, Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA, Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, GA and Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN (catalogue)
2006 Made in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA (catalogue)
2006 Works on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC (catalogue)
2006 World Without End, McKenzie Fine Art, New York, NY
2005 Craig Krull Gallery, solo exhibition, Santa Monica, CA
2004 Edward Thorp Gallery, solo exhibition, New York, NY
2004 Drawings, Hunsaker Schlesinger Fine Art, Santa Monica, CA
2004 Mark Making, Schneider Museum of Art, Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR
2003 Edward Thorp Gallery, solo exhibition, New York, NY
2003 Craig Krull Gallery, solo exhibition, Santa Monica, CA
2002 Edward Thorp Gallery, solo exhibition, New York, NY
2001 Craig Krull Gallery, solo exhibition, Santa Monica, CA
2000 Representing L.A. Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA, and South Texas Institute of Art, Corpus Christi, TX (catalogue)
1999 The Great Drawing Show, 1550 to 1999, Kohn Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1998 Elements, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Art Park, Los Angeles, CA (catalogue)
1998 Landscapes of the Mind, Mt. San Jacinto Community College, San Jacinto, CA
1997 Romantic Landscape and Contemporary Art, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA
1996 Drawn Conclusions, Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA
1996 Land-Inspired Imagery, Anne Reed Gallery, Ketchum, ID
1995 Scissors, Paper, Stone; Nine Women Working, Santa Maria Museum Art Center, Santa Maria, CA
1995 Selections From the Janss Collection, Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID



References

  1. ^ "Hilary Brace on artnet". artnet.com.
  2. ^ "The New York Times: ART IN REVIEW; Hilary Brace". The New York Times.
  3. ^ "Hilary Brace Recent Drawings at Craig Krull Gallery". craigkrullgallery.com.
  4. ^ Ollman, Leah (September, 2006), "Hilary Brace", Art in America, pp. 160–161 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Knight, Christopher (February 23, 2001), "Above It All", Los Angeles Times
  6. ^ Ollman, Leah (September, 2006), "Hilary Brace", Art in America, pp. 160–161 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ Schwyzer, Elizabeth (July 12, 2007), "SBMA Exposes Santa Barbara Photographers", Santa Barbara Independent
  8. ^ Ollman, Leah (June 24, 2005), "Every Picture Tells a Story", Los Angeles Times
  9. ^ Kettmann, Matt (August, 2007), "Santa Barbara Shooters", art ltd. {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)


[[American women artists] Living People

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