Meet Brett Carlson, Featured Artist for Building Madness
On Thursday March 16, 5:30 – 6:30pm, Harlequin will hold an Artist’s Reception to welcome Brett Carlson to the State Theater. This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
Meta-tinations
In Meta-tinations 2023, Brett Carlson, a metal artist, continues his meticulous exploration of hand-cut tin, piecing together strips of metal reclaimed from diverse sources to create new images. The Metatinations series “presents visual images and messages utilizing recycled decorative containers in a collage-style format”. By using recycled decorative tins, brads, and wood, this represents a rebirth of iconic images into new concepts and visuals.
Each piece is composed of abstract shapes sheared from recycled metal, hammered together with approximately 250 brads “used to give a more contemporary style,” and mounted onto a plywood board. Recognizable and disparate images from cookie tins and random images float through the newly created figurative work, spurring free association.
In “Amanda Knox Recycled”, prim Victorian roses cover the face of the Seattle woman accused, acquitted, and then convicted of a lurid sex murder overseas, then overturned … suggesting how the media manipulated the defendant’s image.
In “A Day in the Life”, a rendering of the cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album is superimposed with snippets from French Impressionists paintings, in a time-traveling continuum of psychedelia.
Also in this exhibit, “Lennon on the Cross”is a modern-day interpretation of a crucifixion. “The Three Trees” is a reference to Pulitzer Prize winner The Overstory novel about trees and people who understand them.
It’s my genuine pleasure to display my work here at Harlequin during the performance of Building Madness.
Brett Carlson