Curated by Dejana Pupovac

Are the tunes familiar? brings together two artists working in sculpture, Leah Brown and Vaishu Ilankamban. Reacting to the gallery space, both artists intervene with materials familiar in our everyday lives like branches and bricks. The considerations taken on architecture, material and each other’s presence, are of the same order. Every element is highly involved, where the presence of ‘things’ takes shape with almost invisible hands.

Curated by Dejana Pupovac, also a sculptor, the exhibition is a small experiment in putting the artist on the same plane as one of the elements, rather than manipulator or enforcer of things. Does something happen if the artist can be as vulnerable as material, and as disobedient as space.

Leah Brown is a sculptor working primarily with beeswax, paper, and collected organic remnants. Her work touches thresholds between self and body, human and nonhuman, memory and dream. Born in the countryside of South Carolina, she was a classical ballet dancer in her youth, lived abroad in Italy for several years, and studied art in Spain, France, and New York City. She has been a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center and is now based in Brooklyn, NY.

Vaishnavi (Vaishu) Ilankamban is a New York-based woodworker and visual artist working primarily in sculpture and installation. Her recent work is a layering of the real & imagined memories found in the built environment — recollections and physical traces of family narratives layered with her own. She has participated in residencies at the Ellis-Beauregaurd Foundation, the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She previously served as a craftsperson and senior designer at George Nakashima Woodworkers in New Hope, PA.