Jo-Ann Brody “Off Balance”

Ceres Gallery

[Image: Jo-Ann Brody "Paper mache torsos"]

This event has ended.

Off Balance: “Instability of one’s mind or feelings.
A condition in which different elements are not equal or in the correct proportions.”

In this Ceres Gallery exhibition, Jo-Ann Brody explores papièr maché and the addition of color as well as continuing her work with cement. Many of the papièr maché torsos are remade from previous work reshaped, reimagined into thinner faces, arms/hands appear, angles become more acute. By manipulating the figures and distorting them, the women grow stronger and emotionally truer.

Brody works as an emotional and instinctive response to the world. The figures cannot be explained intellectually, they grow from their act of creation. She uses a light weight cement and now papièr maché with found magazine imagery and mulberry paper.

For the past several decades, Brody has worked with figures in series echoing her current obsessions. This body of work represents a balancing act between overtly feminine forms and minimalist ones. The pieces are not stable, even, or correctly proportioned. They are vulnerable and fragile in appearance with imagery evoking bones, trees, and fertility figures. Line rather than mass is the predominant consideration.

Brody’s typical vocabulary includes elongated figures grouped. The cement figures create a “forest of women.” Nature references include tree/forest, classical fertility goddesses, and occasional incorporation of bird features or frog imagery. Art to Jo-Ann Brody is an island of repose in the ever more challenging world of current affairs.