Art Professor Mia Brownell, a painter, will have two important solo shows opening in the same week in January. One show will be in a gallery in the heart of the art district in New York City, and the other is Brownell’s first museum show, in New Jersey.
From Jan. 9-Feb. 8, J. Cacciola Gallery in New York will present Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting, an exhibition featuring new paintings by Brownell. All are welcome to attend the opening party on Jan. 9 from 6-8 p.m. Brownell also plans to be available to students at the gallery on Jan. 24 from 2-4 p.m. In addition, a traveling retrospective of her work will be at The Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, N.J. from Jan. 12-March 9. A reception and artist talk will take place at the museum on Jan. 12 from 2-4 p.m., and Brownell will offer a workshop on drawing still life at the museum on March 1 from 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Brownell’s paintings are inspired by molecular models and the history of still life painting and simultaneously draw on images retrieved from Protein Data Bank files (where the structures of proteins and nucleic acids are recorded) and the history of the painted food still life. She emulates the masters while introducing a crosscurrent of contemporary themes including the complexities of the industrialized food complex as well as the fundamental schemes of the natural universe.
In the new series of work to be exhibited at J. Cacciola Gallery, Brownell adds to her vocabulary the connection of pollination and the industrialized food complex. She brings attention to the recent astronomical loss of honeybees in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The work focuses on primal questions about food – from how it is grown to how it functions as a signifier in society with a particular focus on pollination.
Brownell studied painting at Carnegie Mellon University and Parsons School of Design in Paris before earning her M.F.A. at SUNY-Buffalo. Her work is included in several public and private collections, including the Addison Gallery of American Art, National Academy of Sciences, Fidelity Investments, and Wellington Management. She has exhibited extensively, and throughout 2014 her traveling retrospective will move from the Hunterdon Art Museum in New Jersey to the Juniata College Museum of Art in Pennsylvania and the Housatonic Museum of Art in Connecticut.
For more information about the J. Cacciola Gallery show, call (212) 462-4646, email info@jcacciolagallery.com or visit the gallery’s website. For information about the Hunterdon Museum show, call (908) 735-8415 or visit the museum’s website.
