The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery has recently acquired five photographs from Southern California-based photographer Laurie Brown (Scripps College class of ‘59). Brown’s work focuses on the oftentimes jarring division between the rural and the urban, addressing issues from urban sprawl to the impact of industrialization on the natural landscape. She is interested in areas that lie on the periphery of larger cities in the American West, and the lasting impacts of human interaction.
Laurie Brown, Convergence #10
About her time at Scripps, Brown remarked: “I’m interested in the big picture. Coming out of Scripps, you have a way of reasoning about the world, connecting with the time in which you’re living while at the same time attempting to maintain an awareness of the larger realities of both the past and the future.”
In this composition, titled Convergence #10, an immediate divide between a developed residential area and its undeveloped surroundings is juxtaposed by an antique stereograph of a figure looking out over a vast, open landscape. As in this piece, Brown’s work is often centered around the passage of time and its lasting impacts on the earth.
With the addition of these five pieces, the gallery is excited to now own a total of eleven works by Laurie Brown. As always, the full permanent collection is accessible online by searching the collection on our website. To view the work of Laurie Brown or other artists in our collection in person, contact Kirk Delman, Interim Director of the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery ([email protected]).
In addition to the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Laurie’s photographs are in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Philadelphia Museum of Art, California Museum of Photography at UCR, Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.
Lucy Bloomstran ‘23, Wilson Arts Administration Intern
Laurie Brown, Recent Terrains #8
Additional Information:
lauriebrownphotographer.com
Scripps College Alumnae in the Arts: Laurie Brown
Work included in:
Recent Terrains: Terraforming the American West (Creating the North American Landscape)
In the Sunshine of Neglect, Defining Photographs and Radical Experiments in Inland Southern California, 1950 to the Present