Grace Brogan
Missoula, MT
Exhibit Year: 2023-2024
About the Artist
Grace Brogan is an interdisciplinary artist, currently focusing much of her work on broom and brush making. Her practice cultivates connections between people, humans, and the beyond human world. She studied art as an undergraduate before embarking on over a decade of study with craftspeople in ceramics, wood, and textiles, including broom makers in 2009 and 2019. During that time, she also worked closely with farmers and other rural entrepreneurs to encourage the growth of values-based economies, and completed an interdisciplinary MS in environmental studies attempting pulling all of these threads together in 2012.
She lives in Missoula, Montana where she spends her time with her family and maintains a studio practice.
Grace Brogan is an MT Open AIR Artist.
Artist Statement
In my practice, I explore the life of raw materials and the processes that bring those items to a state of service in our current culture, with eyes open to the social, economic, and environmental impacts of that journey.
I enjoy playing in the space of mindful and mundane, labor and ritual, ordinary and extraordinary – and have a particular interest in distinctive textures and patterns found in the world around us.
I work with wood, cordage, broomcorn, woodfired ceramics, and horsehair to fashion functional brooms and related sculptures with a particular interest in surface pattern and tactility that harken to the tradition of broom and brush making while leaning forward toward contemporary design.