Available Work July 2024 from Blake Brasher

My work is about challenging perspective and juxtaposing systems that may seem antagonistic to each other—e.g. straight grids and fluid pours—in ways that allow them to not just co-exist but also highlight their defining characteristics in a sort of fluid harmony. In this series I've been incorporating collaged elements; old business cards, ephemera from work, masking tape from the production of other pieces, etc.

The defining elements that tie this series together are cut outs of drawings from Richard Scarry children's books. Specifically I started with his "Best Mother Goose" book because we were handed down this giant tome when we had our first baby and after I read it once I instantly regretted it. The stories valorize child neglect and normalize abuse. They are just terrible. I have a certain strange nostalgia for Scarry's drawing style, though, and couldn't just throw the book away so I think of this series as a way of sort of rescuing these characters; pulling them out of the definite terrible Mother Goose reality I found them in and throwing them in to an uncertain, torrent of possible new realities.