“NATURE+1” is an ongoing body of work by Barbara Bryn Klare about small moments in the every day, or what author Saul Bellow calls “unexpected intrusions of beauty.” An installation of Klare’s artwork will open at the Boxx Gallery on Saturday, Feb. 5.
“It’s about conservation and treading lightly,” Klare writes, “and appreciating a commonplace occurrence: a stick beneath your feet as you walk.” Natural materials were collected from the streets, backyards and woods of northern California and southeastern Ohio.
In her work, “rescued textiles, objects, drawings, text, and natural and digital materials come together in practice exploring fragility, repair, sustainability and powerlessness. Voice and artistic solace are given to the silenced and overlooked in society: unknown poets, deceased mothers, sticks, old clothes,” she states. “I champion the humble and the frayed, freeing the discarded remnants of a throw-away world. The ragged strength of worn fabrics forms the basis for large-scale installations, collage, drawings, objects and social practice.”
Barbara Bryn Klare is an artist and curator based in San Francisco and southeastern Ohio. She received a bachelor of arts in geology and studio art/art history from Oberlin College and a master of fine art merit from University for the Creative Arts UK.
Her artwork has been shown nationally and internationally, including solo shows at the Cleveland Botanical Garden and hugomento gallery in San Francisco; and group shows at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, DZINE Gallery in San Francisco, Touchstone Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Die Kunstschaffenden in Austria. Klare is a founding member of Textile Arts Los Angeles and the International Collage Guild. She is co-curator at THIS GALLERY, based in Vancouver, British Columbia.