MADISON, WI .- Tandem Press is hosting Overgrown, a Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition by Teralyn Brown, University of Wisconsin-Madison MFA Candidate and 2024-2025 Tandem Press Studio Curatorial Project Assistant. In an effort to make sense of life and the human experience, Teralyn Brown creates etchings of abandoned furniture found amongst nature and along roadsides. In these images that embody the essence of change, grief, and hope in the face of the unknown, Brown navigates uncomfortable themes through the familiar anonymity of typically comfortable furniture.
Teralyn Brown is a printmaking artist and educator from Mountain View, California, currently residing in Madison, Wisconsin. Characterized by highly detailed linework and faceless portraiture, Brown’s work explores the shared humanity of messiness and the uncomfortable embrace of impermanence. Just as essential to Brown’s work is her use of found objects and the collective engagement of friends, family, and acquaintances in the search for quietly candid subject matter in their daily lives. Brown has a BA in Studio Art from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is currently an MFA Candidate in Printmaking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Brown is a recipient of the 2024 Gabriele S. Haberland Travel Grant.
Exhibition Statement
The spontaneous appearance of furniture along the sidewalk is an opportunity to question time and the human experience. Mysterious in their origins, discarded chairs serve as a reminder of life and its cycles. Compelled by their candid and fateful compositions, I photograph these found objects as I come across them in the landscape. Through the process of etching, I have the opportunity to more closely consider these subjects during the meditative tracing of lines onto a copper plate.
In Overgrown, I draw parallels between the dense presence of etching and the delicate absence of debossing. In my etchings, the chairs tangle and align with colorful foliage, sharing a similar fate of suspension. One grows while the other decays, marking arbitrary measures of time as lines accumulate. Skeletal in their wooden forms, the chairs embody human vulnerability with arms, backs, limbs, and legs that are broken, missing, and weathering. Displaced in these scenes, the duos grow unruly. In my debossings, shaped copper plates with etched textures are printed without ink, leaving an image formed by the raised emboss of lines and the recessed deboss of the plate surface, creating an entirely different effect.
Printing in both techniques raises questions about what is left behind in the wake of change. Overgrowth is the final stage of the cycle before complete deterioration. Then the grass is cut and the chairs disappear as mysteriously as they appeared, leaving an indent in the soil that will eventually fade. However, there is a regenerative quality when one considers that something is left behind, even if that is only space for something new. A means to an end becomes a means to a beginning.
