Artist Trust, 4Culture and the Estate of Su Job have just announced that performance artist Sheri Brown is the recipient of the 2009 Conductive Garboil Grant, a yearly, non-restricted award of $3,000.
Come and celebrate with Brown as she is honored on Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 6 – 8pm, at All City Coffee, 125 Prefontaine Place South, Seattle, WA 98104.
The Conductive Garboil Grant was developed by artist Su Job just before her passing in December 2008 and acknowledges Seattle artists with a connection to Pioneer Square who have “demonstrated a profound ability to challenge the limits of conductive creative discourse and its effects on our society, pushing the creative act beyond the accepted limits, definitions, or purposes of art while engaging audiences outside the aesthetic industrial complex.”
Brown has lived in Pioneer Square since 2002, teaching, making work, living in art-focused communities, and producing shows for First Thursday. Brown’s artistic practice revolves around butoh, a Japanese art form she discovered in 2001, after 11 years practicing theater and street performance. Butoh evolved from student rebellions after World War II, as a method to challenge social norms and established ideals in search of a purer force beyond westernization and modernization. Brown felt the history and practice of the form satisfied her need to explore and express her interdisciplinary practice and ideals.
“As a conscientious objector to mass media,” explains Brown, “my work with butoh stands up in stark contrast to consumer culture. It begs to look beyond society’s surface to the darker, undercurrent root of authentic creative process, and the initial impetus for the creative act. With increasing intentionality, my work in butoh strives to reconnect the lives of everyday people through radical performance art.”
Photo: Sheri Brown, Diego Pinon butoh workshop performance. © Briana Jones
2 comments
Heath says:
Oct 13, 2009
Congratulations Sheri Brown!
Your work and life humbles me as a human being and an artist. It was such an honor to be on the grant panel this year, and quite the learning experience for me too.
To everyone that applied please do not be discourage and apply again next year. We had such a wonderful group of artists apply for this grant and it was hard to pick from so many talented people. We are so lucky to have so many talented people in our neighborhood changing the world for the better.
Thank you everyone that made Su Job’s fantastic new grant become a reality that supports our local artists. I am so happy to live a community that can make such things possible.
- Heath
Sheri Brown says:
Oct 14, 2009
Thank you so much, Heath. It is a great honor to be flowing in the amazing after-force of Su. Bless her, the work, and us all as we push forward with art and heart, compassionately and courageously.