Preservation

 

Preservation combines the work of these two mixed-media artists into a visceral experience of light, sound, space and time that focuses on their distinct methods of preserving the environment and memory. Michele Brody encompasses the main gallery of chashama's 112 West 44th Street with an installation of Garden Sentinels composed of aluminum hardware that will parade charges of floating plants suspended in tubes of nutrient enriched water, her piece is made possible through a grant from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund. The installation will focus on the piecemeal efforts by humanity to preserve Nature within our industrial society. Rachel Miller fills the floor of the window platform and back gallery space with evolving, historical fabric patterns, which will be comprised of organic and industrial materials. Through this work, she explores how the patterns of our past are both historically and metaphorically connected to personal patterns of ritual, development, and transience. 
www.michelebrody.com

 

   The essence of Michele Brody's work is to understand how we live with change and the constant flux of our environment. By incorporating the growth of plants within a range of materials she wishes to express the meaning of change and transformation as witnessed in the actual life cycle of flora. She wishes to plant within the viewer a desire to be more aware of the tenuous relationship between ourselves, nature, and the urban environment and how we as individuals can make a difference.

   Michele Brody is a native New Yorker who received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. She has exhibited widely over the past 14 years in France, Germany, Costa Rica, California, Chicago and in New York City. She has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a Pollock-Krasner Grant, and has created permanent public works for the MTA and on Wall Street. 

 

   Rachel Miller's work explores environmental and ecological patterns, and how they interconnect with our own patterns of growth, departure, and rejuvenation. Using both the body and landscape as cynosure and subject, she explores the landscape's role as an active residence for both the living and the deceased. Her works, which include sculpture, installation, performance and costume, examine the constant resurfacing of the past, and its integration with the present. She coalesces topics from ritual, archeology, architecture, travel, textiles, and nature.

   Also a native New Yorker, Rachel Miller received her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2004. Her work has been exhibited in California, Italy, Michigan, Kansas City, Philadelphia, and New York City. Her sculptural work was recently featured as part of the collection of Tsao-McKown Architects in Interior Design Magazine, as well as the Tribunale di Firenze for her costume designs in the world premiere Italian opera, El Sogno di Una Note Mezza Estate. She has taught textile design, fiber & material studies, and sustainable practices for over 10 years at Pratt Institute (NY), University of the Arts (PA), Fashion Institute of Technology (NY), Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, and National Institute of Design/ NID in India. She is currently Professor and Head of Textiles in the Craft & Design Program at Sheridan College (ON).
www.rachel-miller.com