Artist Leslie Brack has a collection of her work, Memorandum, displayed at the Handwerker Gallery on Ithaca College’s campus. The collection is of Brack’s most recent work of watercolor paintings of file cabinets.
The detailed paintings of the file cabinets show rust, dents, locks and sometimes name tags that give perspective of the type of person the file cabinets belong to. In Brack’s own words she feels as though the file cabinets object both “empty and accumulating” making what is inside the file cabinets obsolete.
On Oct 5th Brack gave a talk at the Handwerker Gallery about her past work and what inspired her to do her work now. Her previous work was heavily influenced by pop culture and politically influenced. All of her pieces were oil paintings layered with magazine images that she purchased to use in her art. Some had colorful background with equally colorful magazine letters saying messages such as, “it’s time to shop;” a saying in which Brack heard after the attack on 9/11 and thought that it was outrageous thing to do after such a tragedy.
Others such as the one down below have a softer background with loud colorful letters being the forefront. In this picture my name is are words from an Eminem song, another reference and play off of pop culture which Brack liked to use often. Most of her earlier works were also playful and evoked humor while holding an underlying message about issues that were going on in the U.S.
Brack’s latest work is a reflection of a an age of a “bureaucratic world” that invokes empathy for “their exhausted purpose.” Moving away from loud colors of magazine’s Brack simpler artwork still evokes the same amount of emotion as her earlier works did.
Deanna Wetmore 