This past year, artist Carson Davis Brown disrupted large retail stores, using their own products to create site-specific installation pieces. For this project, titled Mass, installations were made without permission using found materials in the space. The installations were constructed and photographed, then left to be experienced by passersby and ultimately disassembled by the locations staff. His installations were almost always one singular color, situated in a part of the store that would spotlight the structure. The pieces are meant to take the consumer out of their expectations for the space, and give second thought to the store and the products in it.
Brown is the most recent Artist Initiative grant recipient, and his project will be a slight departure from the work of Mass. Keeping the environment of retail corporations, Brown will rearrange products on shelves into patchwork patterns that mimic patterns found in quilts. “New American Quilts are a continued mirror of our cultural, economic, and social state as a consumer nation,” he explains. “There are parallels between the ‘corporate community’ in the retail landscape and the historical community that formed around quilt making.” Brown will further parallel the corporate and quilting worlds by having photos of his installations woven into blankets via one of the retailer’s personalized gifts section.
Brown successfully toes the line between playful and serious, creating art that at first glance may seem a simple block of color or pattern of colors, but upon further observation conveys a meaningful message. That duality may come from his draw towards feelings instead of subject matter. “I think what got me into photography was less about the photograph and more about how I felt when I was out taking photos, framing the environment, seeing things differently. It gave me a way to translate the places I was experiencing.” His disposition allows the installations to be approachable, but also thought-provoking. Brown is especially excited by the potential for his art to be a “wearable” as well. “you’re able to wrap yourself up in a blanket made of the simultaneous security and paralysis felt by nineteen different options of Wheat Thins.”
See more of Brown’s work on his VSCO, and view more photos below of the beginning stages of New American Quilts, as well as photos from Mass.
Words by Sarah Goerzen
