andree brown, American Leaf, 10"Hx10"Wx3"D, bronze, 2025
andree brown
Sculptor
Andree Brown is a contemporary artist who, when the world screeched to a halt in 2020, used the solitude to activate her accu...mulated knowledge and begin making large abstract sculptures, based on the leaf form. Growing up in New York City, Andree spent her free time after school at the Metropolitan Museum. Her favorite pastime was making art, mostly out of paper mâché. After earning her BFA at Rhode Island School of Design in sculpture, exploring jewelry design, holloware, ceramics, and other media, Andree started making large sculptures in colored wax and exhibited them in Boston, represented by Barbara Singer Gallery. She also exhibited at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Building sculptures led her to establish a jewelry design firm called ADB INC. All the elements were handcrafted and cast in sterling and gold. The designs were an interpretation of natural forms such as flowers and leaves. Museum gift shops like The Textile Museum in Washington D.C., The Baltimore Museum of Art, and The Folk Art Museum in NYC, as well as high-end boutiques, purchased her work for resale. During this period, she also pursued a culinary career as a chef, working in Independent Schools in NYC. She discovered there are many similar processes in cooking and making sculptures. Since 2022, three artist residencies have offered her a studio in natural landscapes where she has created wax forms, small and large, some cast in porcelain and bronze. One wax form is now in the permanent collect
Works
Wild Pear Leaf
4'Hx3'Wx1'D, wax, 2024
Caper Leaf & Blossom
10'Hx10"Wx3"D, bronze, 2025
Fig Leaf
4'Hx4'Wx1'D, wax, 2024
As a sculptor, when I see an organic form that surprises and delights me, my passion and goal is to capture its essence. Living in a small apartment in Manhattan makes me dream of walking through a forest, smelling the greens, seeing large blocks of soothing color and the shapes of leaves, branches, and trees. My solution is to bring nature to me by making organic forms. My recent, and third artist residency last summer in Chianti, Italy, surrounded by olive groves and vineyards, accelerated this idea of making sculptures about indigenous plants, which led to my current project, Leaves of Greve. My final abstract sculpture was a large Fig Leaf. I chose leaves as a symbol of social awareness because they are a clear indicator of climate change. Currently, climate change is speeding up the process of leaves changing colors, trapping their heat, and affecting local ecosystems. My work takes one leaf at a time and honors it, blowing it up to about four feet, altering the perspective on something we see every day. I work with dyed green wax, which is melted, cooled, carved, filed, sanded, and sometimes cast. The forms start as big wax balls before I whittle them down to my expectations. In the end, I create simple, minimal forms with multiple angles, which translate as words telling the story of this leaf collection. The viewer experiences a range of emotions as they observe each piece from different angles, often bringing out surprising interpretations, especially when they
