YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – “The Audacity of the Mundane,” an exhibition of works by Charlee Brodsky of Pittsburgh, will open Sunday, Dec. 22, at The Butler Institute of American Art and run through March 2.
An artist’s reception will take place at 1 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 5.
Brodsky is a fine art/documentary photographer and emeritus professor of photography at Carnegie Mellon University.
She created the playful but meaningful works in the exhibit by arranging scenes on a table top out of small toys, miniatures and other objects that she found, purchased or collected. Brodsky then photographs the scene.
The pieces, she said, explore social issues and beauty. More of her works can be viewed at CharleeBrodskyPhotography.com.
“My stage is a piece of wood, the top of an old tool chest, 14 inches wide, 35 inches long, and just an inch high,” Brodsky said. “It sits on a pedestal close to a window that gets filtered, rarely direct, light. Rocks, pigs, balls, flowers, binder clips, rabbits, an occasional grape tomato and other miscellaneous things that I collected through the years, recently ordered on eBay and/or picked up on the street, are my actors. They’re also my friends. They have personalities. … They are my perfect, imperfect collaborators that I work with to create stories of innocence, joy, affectation, impending doom, hope, as well as of other conditions that I see and partake in.”
Louis Zona, executive director of The Butler, had high praise for Brodsky’s unique art.
“It is remarkable on many levels [with a] strong association with surrealism as seen through its ties to cubistic space and the magic realism of Tchalchew and Berman,” he said. “The artist is clearly a technical wiz.”
Pictured at top: This piece, titled “The Prince Was a Frog,” created in 1999, is part of Charlee Brodsky’s upcoming exhibit at The Butler Institute of American Art.