All my work is done as an emotional and instinctive response to the world around me. I cannot explain them intellectually; they grow from my hands and my heart.
Jo-Ann Brody
First, she gets your attention with a compelling gaggle of 5’-6’ tall cement figures, various pigments, slim, arms flailing, reaching, protecting - possibly dancing – although, they are hip-less, practically breast-less and each one pleads for partnership. Hey, what’s the idea, here? These are steel drivin’ women. Here you have clunky feet, formless hands, featureless faces, a couple of them sporting large, very large, hips resembling a tuning fork - not a shabby metaphor for female sensitivities.
It was not surprising to hear Brody claim herself an “ardent feminist” with “no agenda… hmm” She finished a series of figures, called them “Guardians” and then later titled them “Sentinels” sans caps. I suppose these days we might be dreaming about hiring a private sentinel for our kids at Halloween time, in public schools, at U.S. airports (like during the full body search required of my daughter before allowed to board a domestic plane) Okay, so it’s just our friendly airlines protecting us from Terrorists. Oh boy, is this protection thing ever confusing.
It’s obvious, after meeting the artist, that she has thought, endlessly, about war, poverty, immigrants and the realities of injustices. Her figures are naked and bald, salt of the earth mama people performing with abandonment to the act of whatever it is they are doing. Actually, go back - it is Jo-Ann Brody’s abandonment as well, claiming “I’m doing what makes sense to me… and…The women…are symbolic and iconic of today’s struggle to remain strong in the face of a darkening world and creative in the face of multiple losses and conflicting obligations.”
Jo-Ann’s immersion in her artwork (while mothering three adopted children, one each from Vietnam, Korea including a street child from Brazil.) is a beautiful thing to see. Nothing pedantic lurking in the gestures, textures, color, or materials of her work. No stories, really. She fashions women crowds, gathering for no apparent cause. These women seem honorably anonymous, realistically awkward, human, sensitive to prudishness and the gazing public. To object, on any level, to her work would puzzle me. She is the one objecting and after all of the clay gets put where she intends and the figures take shape, painted with earth and metal oxides, and fired in her kiln, what unfolds is a ‘rush’ of simple movement and color, amusingly countering (or balancing) today’s corporate women. That is, until the impact of more- than -one strikes it’s audience, and then the whole arrangement is transmuted into a parcel of humanity, evolved from ashes, sadness and tough memories. Take your pick: corporate or human or both. (I pick the latter)
Back to “objecting”. Brody hands me this article titled: “Office Artwork Brings Out the Critic in Employees” (NY Times, Jan 31, 2001) It seems a piece of Jo-Ann’s artwork was purchased by Pfizer Inc, the New York pharmaceutical giant and later censored it and traded for another. The first figure with it’s small head and huge hips (symbolizing feminine strength, according to Brody) threatened some of the female employees, “who felt it was demeaning”. The replacement piece was more about hands, and less about hips, and the Pfizer employees could rest, while they worked. (For an alternate perspective, I recommend a viewing of Rubens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His painting, The Garden of Love c. 1634-5 for example, is helpful towards getting a grip on the glorious stature of large women)
I’m confused. (again) The world of color coding artwork for homes and offices, avoiding political or social controversy, compromising and resorting to the needs of a buying public to keep it…what?…safe from….who?… So maybe we don’t want to invite alternative ideas to our customary ones, or truth is, “abstract art may be more likely to puzzle than offend amateur critics”.
The year before the NY Times article and controversy, Jo-Ann traveled to Kyoto, Japan as a resident artist in Nishijin, a district known for its textiles and weaving and where all of the kimonos were made. An exchange program between Kyoto and the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill was developed and they became sister cities in an undertaking of preservation and revitalization offering artists and artisans opportunities for travel and studio space in each others countries. As I left, Jo-Ann points to a large poster of her friend and Japanese ceramic artist, Keiko Ikoma, glazing a pot, oblivious to everything outside of her work, growing (magically) from her hands.
For more about Jo-Ann Brody’s work, visit her website at www.jo-annbrody.com. She is represented by Ceres Gallery on 27th Street in Manhattan, and Maxwell Fine Arts in Peekskill. NY. Her recent works are to be included in Collaborative Concepts Sculpture exhibition at Saunder’s Farm in Garrison, NY, 10x10x10 in Ellenville, as well as a traveling exhibition: Visible and Invisible Spaces, curated by Jennifer Heath, the editor of “The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore and Politics.” (University of California Press, 2007)
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