Brenda Mallory

Seeds, insects, and ideas. Traditions, technologies, and germs. All travel through the world changing the places they leave and the places they land. This site specific installation surrounds travelers passing through Concourse A at Portland International Airport. The exhibit features a multitude of organic forms that allude to the influences of global travel through the metaphor of seeds and spores. Read more in this OPB article.

Assorted works from the last few years.

An homage to Carolus Linnaeus, b.1707, an observer of nature and known as the father of the modern system of biological organization and nomenclature. Organic sculptures co-mingle with found objects, both natural and machined, blurring and confusing the distinction between technology and nature in a theatrical construction that invites sorting, counting, and naming. Strewn schematics, unfinished projects, and buckets of specimens create a classifier's workshop.

The Window Project at PDX Contemporary Art is in a high pedestrian traffic area of Portland. Both sculpture and performance, this project engaged passersby with proliferating forms that grew, changed, and moved continually throughout the month. The organic nature of the forms contrasted with the static objects that served as my props during the daily duties of creating and tending the installation.

A bottomless stack of cloth scraps in the shape of an elongated oval (known in geometry and religion as the vesica pisces) inspired Offcuts. I set myself two parameters: 1) use only these pieces; 2) adhere to a basic law of physics which states “matter cannot be created or destroyed, but can only change its form”. If I cut apart a piece of fabric I had to form something else with what remained. Nothing went into the trash. No other restrictions. They were variously burned, waxed, sewn, bolted, rolled, stretched, crushed and combined with other materials.

“Biophilia" is defined as “an innate attraction to life in its diverse forms.” The work was was inspired by a biology textbook, whose introductory chapter, “Themes in the Study of Life,” covered basic principles of science but also hinted at answers to philosophical questions in headings such as “diversity and unity are the dual faces of life on Earth” and “oganisms are open systems that interact continuously with their environments”. I illustrated each of these lofty statements with a sculpture.

Living in a world of headlines full of fear and paranoia about disease and terrorism, Vancouver artist, Fei Disbrow, and I collaborated on an installation called Porous Borders at the Portland Building.

Mixed media sculptures of myriad repeated forms flow across walls and undulate along the floor in complex growth patterns that bring together the natural and industrial world. The works emphasize repetitive tasks and duplication of forms connected by tenuous mechanics. It is a continuing exploration of complex relationships in nature and the impact human interventions have upon these systems.

Near the Hive represents the period of time that my life and that of my beekeeping grandfather overlapped. Each unit represents a day. Other works in the series relate to cycles, beekeeping, and forms related to hives.