First Friday: April 2023
Inspiration & Updates from Artist Brian Madden
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
These beloved words by author Anaïs Nin have been guiding me through my life as a fine artist. And after all this rain we’ve been having in San Francisco this spring, it’s time to blossom.
You’re receiving my First Friday newsletter because you’ve supported my artwork, visited my studio exhibitions, or signed up to stay in touch. Thank you for all of it. I’m grateful you’re here.
I’ve got some goodies for you this month. In this newsletter I’ll share:
What I’m making: The latest studio work I’ve been speaking into existence
What I’m seeing: San Antonio travel inspiration that made me dance
What I’m reading: A mini book review about one of my favorite artists
What I’m hearing: A soundtrack that’s been motivating me, and I hope you, too.
What I’m Making: Sonic Monuments
Exploring personal growth & the process of becoming in my artwork, the muse has led me through a range of media over the years. And while you might know me as a marble inlay mosaic sculptor, lately I’ve been returning to a medium from my younger days as a musician: recorded sound.
I’m calling this body of work Sonic Monuments. Each piece is the physical embodiment of a sound recording. The artwork explores themes that make up the soundscape of our lives, like growth, motivation, and inspiration.
Completed this past month, these sandcast & lathe-turned brass candlesticks are functional studies for larger, future forms of expression.
And they were also the perfect opportunity to show off these hand-painted candles By Blizzard, a friend and fellow artist & designer in Portland, Oregon.
The Sonic Monuments are coming to life as an ongoing series of large scale, freestanding sculptures in a range of media, each with their own stories to tell. The work is inspired in part by Ruth Asawa, Constantin Brâncuși, and Olafur Elliason.
What I’m Seeing: Ruby City / Gabriel Orozco
Since 2020 I’ve been guided by The Artist’s Way, a personal development program by writer & director Julia Cameron, meant to support creative recovery in blocked artists & creative spirits of all kinds. Cameron promotes two key habits that can help recover and nurture the inner artist.
First, each morning, write or draw 3 pages longhand in a journal — stream of consciousness, brain dump type of writing, to make space for the day ahead. Second, take yourself on a weekly artist date. Doesn’t matter where, just go somewhere inspiring and spend some QT with your inner artist.
So in March, when I found myself in San Antonio for the first time for a wedding, I knew I was in for a treat: an artist date in a new city.
A gratifying google maps search led me to Ruby City, a beautiful art museum that houses the personal art collection of the immensely productive and influential artist, collector, patron, and philanthropist Linda Pace, recently completed by world renowned architect Adjaye Associates.
Inside the museum, taking in a spectrum of thought-provoking work by international artists and previous artists-in-residence at ArtPace, I was drawn to the work of Gabriel Orozco.
This series of large-scale graphite rubbings by Orozco were crowdsourced in 1999 with the help of commuters outside the Havre-Caumartin Métro station in Paris. It reminded me of the time-based art in my Six Months in Dogpatch Collection, and I was amazed by the range of movement in each piece.
Later in March, Orozco’s work inspired me to create an experimental piece at my birthday party. My dad helped me install a primed white canvas onto the floor of my studio right before the party began. And over the course of 4.5 hours, we crowdsourced a print through guests standing, dancing, and moving through the space. Dust on canvas, capturing the spirit of movement. The working title: Party Prints.
What I’m Reading: Ruth Asawa: All is Possible
It can be helpful for artists to understand how they contribute to the canon of art history, so I’ve been making a conscious effort to learn more about the history of art and my place in it. A key part of that is learning more about the historical artists I admire. Not just the inspiration and process behind their work, but also who they were as individuals.
For my birthday this month, my wife Jen gave me an exhibition catalog of one of my all-time favorite artists, Ruth Asawa, from the exhibition Ruth Asawa: All is Possible at David Zwirner gallery, curated by Helen Molesworth.
An artist-scientist-explorer, mother, teacher, and beloved San Franciscan, Ruth Asawa was a mold-breaking, prolific creator who incorporated craft and fine art in unexpected ways. Emerging from a childhood in American Japanese internment camps, Asawa went on to help pioneer a new artistic movement at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, before building an immense body of work that defied the norms of her day and leaving a lasting, beloved legacy within the art world.
I look up to Ruth Asawa for the way she created from the heart, shared her gifts with others, and built a holistic creative life for herself and her family. Her intricate hanging woven sculptures made of brass and iron wire are incredibly inspiring to me, and have subconsciously inspired the movement of wave forms in my Sonic Monuments body of work.
What I’m Hearing: First Friday 040723
My days and nights are fueled by music, so I wanted to share the First Friday 040723 playlist I’ve assembled over the course of the past month. It was built with one rule in mind. The songs could only come from songs I’ve overheard, received, discovered, or rediscovered, somewhere out in the world. Songs can be saved through the Shazam or SoundHound apps, received from friends IRL and on instagram, or jotted down thanks to patient baristas and waiters.
This month’s songs were happened upon in a coffee shop in Mendocino, exploring San Antonio, at dinner parties and different spots in San Francisco, and through friends in town and online. There’s a range of high and low energy in this collection, like life itself, and I hope you enjoy it. And if you have any recs for songs, we do take requests ;)
Thanks for spending some time with me. If you know anyone who’d be inspired by this newsletter, please feel free to share and invite them to subscribe.
See you out there,
Brian
brian@brianbmadden.com
Image of Mossy / Frosty by Jason Hsu Studio in the Presidio of San Francisco