FROM VERMONT ART GUIDE #3

Brenda Garand Art

It’s Like Falling Into Water, the title of one of Brenda Garand’s sculptures, aptly describes the experience of viewing her amphibious body of work. Whether it is her drawings mixing walnut ink, flood clay (from the storm Irene), and India ink or her sculptures with wire, porcupine quill, hawthorn, and beaver stick, Garand’s art is drenched in nature’s energy and wily ways. Her wet-on-wet drawings swim with movement; they drip and float in currents of rich brown, inky black, and chamois white. Dian Parker profiles the gracious art of Brenda Garand in Vermont Art Guide #3.

This article originally appeared in Vermont Art Guide #3. For all sorts of information about Vermont’s art scene, Subscribe or Get a Copy of the print magazine.

Her dangling sculptures drape and swing from the wall with a cascade of thin wire and fishing lures, casting shadows of intricate shapes like overhanging branches of a leafed tree on a stream. She cuts and paints roofing paper to look like feathers and winds silk around delicate tree branches and steel that mimics the fuzzy lines of her gouache and ink drawings.

This article originally appeared in Vermont Art Guide #3, for all sorts of information about Vermont’s art scene, Subscribe or Get a Copy of the print magazine.

Brenda Garand is the recipient of a Fulbright Grant to France; a Fulbright Berlin Seminar; The Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Grant to Bayeux, France; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Grant, Vermont Council on the Arts Creation Grant, and many others. Residencies include Yaddo, Ragdale, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, Atelier Silex in Quebec, and the Pouch Cove Foundation in Newfoundland. She has exhibited in New York, Ohio, Virginia, Vermont, New Hampshire, Quebec, and Japan. Her website is www.brendagarand.com.

Image (top and center):
Manitou
by Brenda Garand
84″x60″x15″
steel, roofing paper, wire, fabric, wool, silk
2014
Courtesy of the artist

Image (bottom):
Contoocook (detail)
by Brenda Garand
101″x20″x25″
steel, wire roofing paper, sinker
2010
Courtesy of the artist