Linda Leslie Brown
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PLASTIGLOMERATE

  • Busted Statues   mixed media, 15 x 12 x 13", 2017 Busted Statues   mixed media, 15 x 12 x 13", 2017 Busted Statues mixed media, 15 x 12 x 13", 2017
  • Fossil Bamboo   mixed media, 15 x 12 x 10", 2018 Fossil Bamboo   mixed media, 15 x 12 x 10", 2018 Fossil Bamboo mixed media, 15 x 12 x 10", 2018
  • Fused  mixed media, 10 x 11 x 10", 2018 Fused   mixed media, 10 x 11 x 10", 2018 Fused mixed media, 10 x 11 x 10", 2018
  • Ikebana   mixed media, 5 x 21 x 11", 2018 Ikebana   mixed media, 5 x 21 x 11", 2018 Ikebana mixed media, 5 x 21 x 11", 2018
  • Pile   mixed media, 11 x 14 x 12", 2018 Pile   mixed media, 11 x 14 x 12", 2018 Pile mixed media, 11 x 14 x 12", 2018
  • Vernal   mixed media, 13 x 17 x 11", 2018 Vernal   mixed media, 13 x 17 x 11", 2018 Vernal mixed media, 13 x 17 x 11", 2018
  • Vernal   mixed media, 13 x 17 x 11", 2018 Vernal   mixed media, 13 x 17 x 11", 2018 Vernal mixed media, 13 x 17 x 11", 2018
  • Yellow Cup   mixed media, 10 x 13 x 9", 2017 Yellow Cup   mixed media, 10 x 13 x 9", 2017 Yellow Cup mixed media, 10 x 13 x 9", 2017
  • The Well  mixed media, 10 x 9 x 10", 2017 The Well   mixed media, 10 x 9 x 10", 2017 The Well mixed media, 10 x 9 x 10", 2017
  • On the Beach   mixed media, 19 x 17 x 9", 2018 On the Beach   mixed media, 19 x 17 x 9", 2018 On the Beach mixed media, 19 x 17 x 9", 2018
  • Green Thirst   mixed media, 7 x 8 x 6", 2017 Green Thirst   mixed media, 7 x 8 x 6", 2017 Green Thirst mixed media, 7 x 8 x 6", 2017
  • Iguana Romaine   mixed media, 11 x 19 x 15", 2018 Iguana Romaine   mixed media, 11 x 19 x 15", 2018 Iguana Romaine mixed media, 11 x 19 x 15", 2018
  • Clutches   mixed media, 20 x 16 x 11", 2018 Clutches   mixed media, 20 x 16 x 11", 2018 Clutches mixed media, 20 x 16 x 11", 2018
  • Clutches   mixed media, 20 x 16 x 11", 2018 Clutches   mixed media, 20 x 16 x 11", 2018 Clutches mixed media, 20 x 16 x 11", 2018
  • Clutches   mixed media, 20 x 16 x 11", 2018 Clutches   mixed media, 20 x 16 x 11", 2018 Clutches mixed media, 20 x 16 x 11", 2018
  • Installation view Installation view Installation view
  • Plastiglomerate Array Plastiglomerate Array Plastiglomerate Array
  • Installation view Installation view Installation view
  • Installation view Installation view Installation view
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NOTE: Mixed media materials include: ceramic, plastic, rubber, plaster, paper clay, fiber,
wood, metal, concrete rubble, vinyl, Apoxie Sculpt, silicone, shell, antler, foam



“Like unearthed, archaeological treasures, a key part of (Brown’s) sculptures’ strengths lies in their inscrutability...The humble, funky, at times awkward silhouettes encompass a range of contradictions-organic and manufactured, bright and muted, sharp and smooth, foreign and familiar—embracing binaries in a way that embodies wisdom and pathos.”
— Shana Dumont Garr

“Brown creates abstract remnants of a society hell-bent on technological progress, heedless of the warnings that are all around us. Despite the beauty of their forms and the way that they seem to beg to be touched, retracing the movements of Brown’s hand as she worked with the materials, there is something rather banal and sad in the waste. Immune to the processes of decomposition and cycles of transformation that govern our bodies and other organic matter, these objects remain stubbornly inert as if found in some future landfill: broken, cast aside, and then petrified. The objects begin to write our era into the geology of the earth.”
— Heather Davis

My recent sculptural work draws upon the transformative exchanges between nature, objects and viewers’ creative perception. These works are rife with allusions to the body. At the same time, they suggest the plastic, provisional, and uncertain world of a new and transgenic nature, where corporeal and mechanical entities recombine.  My works invite viewers to engage in an intimate examination that is both delightful and disturbing. They serve as relics of possible futures and of the effect of human actions on earth systems.

These are assemblage works, composed of fragments of ceramic, plastic, metal, wood, vinyl, foam, paperclay, rubber and other seemingly random, mostly discarded materials. Altered, found and fabricated, in the making process I collage a collection of readymades. Their composition effects a kind of accidental equilibrium, indicating a creaturely symbiosis through which they are conjoined. They may actually be holobionts: assemblages of different species that form ecological units. Their forms are vulnerably porous with holes, and they connect and circulate energy through tubing of various colors and translucencies.

The title of this exhibition, Plastiglomerate, summons the image of the overwhelming omnipresence of plastic, a human made substance created at a time when people imagined that we could do such a thing as throw something “Away.” Now that we know that there is no such place as “Away,” we’re faced with massive gyres of plastic in the Pacific, and the understanding that plastic does not disappear, but simply breaks down into tiny and tinier bits, which end up everywhere. Plastiglomerate is the name for a new substance created through the heat fusion of plastic bits, sand, and other materials. It is a new form of rock, and is said to be a geological marker of the Anthropocene era. This is the Human era, that is changing Earth and its beings in ways we can’t entirely predict, from strange weathers to programmable synthetic DNA. Things large and small are inevitably being changed.

In Mythologies, Roland Barthes points out that “more than a substance, plastic is the very idea of its infinite transformation; as its everyday name indicates, it is ubiquity made visible. And it is this, in fact, which makes it a miraculous substance: a miracle is always a sudden transformation of nature. Plastic remains impregnated throughout with this wonder: it is less a thing than the trace of a movement.” As a sculptor, I am drawn to malleability and movement, and the transformation of materials pushing against one another. This metamorphic play of the literal with the imagined, as fragments of broken things accumulate and cling together, is the foundation for the adventure that is my practice.