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Robert Brady: Speaking to the Collective Unconscious
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17004 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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8 / 1990 |
2,008 Words |
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Cheryl White
Cheryl White is an artist, teacher, and art critic, and a
frequent contributor to Artweek, American Ceramics, and
publications in the San Francisco Bay area. |
Robert Brady almost missed becoming an artist. He grew up in Reno, Nevada, as part of a nomadic family, all of whom, at one time or another, worked in the gambling casinos. With no higher aspiration that being a "pit boss", he began his senior year of high school and found himself in a crafts class. The harried crafts teacher directed him to make a pitcher. Brady does not recall getting any instruction in this unfamiliar task. Nevertheless, he produced a slab-built clay pitcher within the fifty-minute period and became hooked on ceremonies. The teacher later helped him secure the scholarship for art school that changed his life.
Hard to Class
Today, Brady creates ceramic sculpture that resists even the most determined attempts at morphological classification. The frontal stance, simplified form, and attenuated appendages of one of his human/animal figures might suggest a tribal primitive source - perhaps the haunting carved wood figures from the Caroline Islands. Yet the bright, Neo-Expressionist polychrome colors of the same piece bring its painterly reference squarely into the Modernist era.
Throughout his fifteen-year career, Brady has produced large totemic vessel forms; a series of modular abstract sculptures based on the grid; numerous masks, wall-mounted heads, and torsos; and an impressive variety of freestanding sculptures. For several years the human figure has been the most dominant motif, but Brady's restless creativity makes easy cataloging of his work impossible. His sculptures have a way of evoking the viewer's empathy, arousing an array of emotions that make their content as complex and varied as their visual appearance. No
... (1999 of 12423 Characters)
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