The Winter 2012 issue of Modern in Denver magazine features a profile of my work. If you are in the Denver area, you can pick up a copy at Tattered Cover, Barnes and Noble, or Whole Foods. Six pages with several large full-color photos, it is an excellent piece.

Here is an excerpt:

Many of Mindy’s subjects are found in nature and, even when reduced to the point that the original subject is no longer immediately apparent, possess a clear organic quality. Be it a muddled mound of trash or an autumn forest floor, the original subject retains significance even after being reduced to solid shapes.

“The subject of the photograph adds a layer of meaning to the paintings, as well as a particular shape quality,” Mindy explains, “When there is a sense of recognition in the images, it adds the deja’ vu feeling I am interested in – something familiar presented in an unfamiliar way. It is like an epiphany”

Forest Floor, ink and gouache on stretched paper, 35″ x 46″

I just finished a new painting, Forest Floor, the third in a group of paintings that will be shown at Rule Gallery this Spring, as part of my first solo exhibition at the Denver gallery, The Geography of Looking. I am planning for the show to have a smattering of some of the modes in which I work: large stretched paintings, very small daily paintings, and a wall painting. I am especially excited to see how the wall painting may interact with the stretched works, since I have never seen the two paired together in the same space. I will be looking to create a sense of continuity between the two, perhaps even creating a larger, overall image. The exhibition is scheduled for March-April, so I have the next few months to put things together.

The Urban Institute for Contemporary Art has produced a short video interview with me discussing my work Forest for the Trees. The video also includes images of the piece both in progress and completed. To visit the UICA’s YouTube page and see this and other videos, you can also follow this link.

SEI Studios put together a stylish video of the opening reception and Gala at the UICA in Grand Rapids. My husband and I are featured here on their first frame. You can follow this link to Vimeo to view it. UICA: The Odd Ball on Vimeo

Forest for the Trees, 110 ft. x 22.5 ft., latex on wall

Installed at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art

I recently completed a new site-specific piece for the UICA in Grand Rapids, Michigan, titled Forest for the Trees. The opening reception was on Monday, July 25, corresponding with the opening gala for the beautiful new building that I had the opportunity to work in. Here is my statement for the piece:

Forest for the Trees is a large-scale painting that directly addresses the visibility of the Ramp Project Space from the facing street to create an image that is simultaneously interior and exterior. Drawing on photographic imagery of tree shadows, as well as actual tracings of shadows collected in downtown Grand Rapids, the painting creates a connection between the interior wall and the phenomena of light and landscape on the exterior of the building. The scale of the wall and the experience of moving through the space are emphasized through forced perspective, which enhances the sense of the height of the wall, and the narrative composition, which is revealed as the viewer progresses along the length of the painting. In both of these ways, the painting is continually referring back to the architecture. The shadow images are reduced to a single color and value in order to create ambiguity in the reading the shapes, and the color was chosen to create the feeling of temperature, a cool shaded area inviting viewers from the exterior. The title, Forest for the Trees, refers to the scale of the painting and the viewer’s inability to see the entire image from any single vantage point. Conceptually, however, the overarching image is apparent, the appearance that the natural world is inhabiting the building, creating ambiguity between interior and exterior, natural and built environments.

For more information on the exhibition, please visit the UICA website. Coming soon, there will also be a video interview available on YouTube produced by UICA.

A photo of the work in progress was on the front page of the Entertainment section of the Grand Rapids Press on Sunday, July 24. To read the article, please visit the Press website.

I am currently in Grand Rapids beginning to install a new piece, Forest for the Trees, as part of the first exhibition in the new building for the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts. What you see above is a detail of the work in progress. The main wall is 95 feet long and 22.5 feet high and is visible from the street; the windows to the right of the ramp faces onto Fulton Street, the center of  downtown Grand Rapids. The process will take about two weeks to complete, and I will post again with images of the finished piece.

Also, I recently learned that my work was accepted to the online, curated artist registry of White Columns, an exhibition space in New York. Please visit their website to see my portfolio.

My work was highlighted in two recent articles in the Denver Post.

The first was a review by Kyle MacMillan of the current exhibition, One Hundred Days: the Online Collaborative at Hinterland, published Friday, May 20, 2011.
From the article:

Bray, among the best of a new generation of Denver artists, deconstructs natural and built landscape in unexpected ways in paintings and installations, exploring light and dark and positive and negative space. She is showing 25 5-by-7-inch drawings – quickly executed yet smartly realized works with an appealing freshness and immediacy.

The second article, also written by Kyle MacMillan, was a two-part series for the Denver Post recognizing the top 12 artists in Colorado 35 and under. Titled Art’s New View: the 12 best Colorado artists 35 and under, this exciting and generous piece included other great local artists, including Nathan Abels and Monique Crine, both of whom I’ve shown with here in Denver.
From the article:

Residence: Denver
Media: Painting, drawing and installation
Why we like her: Experiments with positive-negative space are age-old, but Bray manipulates the dichotomy in fresh ways, exploring the ambiguous realm between abstraction and representation.
Art-world cred: Residency, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass, 2009
Her take: My current paintings on paper draw their imagery from photographs of the landscape, suburbia, industrial parks and other everyday environments. I use these images as templates for a meticulous process of fragmentation, creating a complex field of small shapes that may or may not be recognizable but, instead, are enigmatic representations of our environment.
Influences: Agnes Martin, Cornelia Parker, Thomas Nozkowski
Art today: What I see in my peers is a turn away from large subjects, such as political and social issues, and large scales, including bright colors and slick materials, in favor of personal subjects, modest scales and an idiosyncratic visual language.

To read the entire article, follow this link.