Brece Honeycutt

Brece Honeycutt makes drawings, sculptures and installations. She received an undergraduate degree in Art History from Skidmore College and a Master’s degree in sculpture from Columbia University. She lives in Sheffield, MA and New York, NY.

All projects begin with research. Primary sources -- journals, diaries, letters, photographs -- as well as history books provide the background needed to make the final work. Objects related to the subject -- the washboards, buckets and skillets used by pioneer women; the heated bricks carried by Clara Barton to wounded soldiers on the frozen battlefield; or the hand written recipes on the chalkboards -- provide the visual foundation for each piece. The textures and colors of wax, paper pulp, pigment and hand-written text enrich these utilitarian forms and enhance their symbolic function.

The installations are often viewed in an environment that specifically relates to the work’s themes. silence, now permanently sited on the grounds of Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, directly references its founder, Mary Elizabeth Garrett. at Table, formerly situated on the grounds of the Arlington Arts Center, relates to passed-on history of recipes and food. The slate tabletop references the old school building (AAC was formerly the Maury School) and the audio portion recalls the tradition of passing down recipes between family members or kitchen workers. Health & Hearth temporarily installed on the grounds of Barton’s historic home and Red Cross Headquarters in Glen Echo, MD. Locating the work in this way creates a more direct and interactive experience for the viewer.

The cast paper sculptures and works on paper function as records of touch, as records of use and records of time. In our over mechanized world, we are becoming further alienated from the daily—it is being erased from our physical and mental landscapes. For example, the sculptures of pitchers recall when they carried milk and water from the well—when plastic throwaway containers did not exist and everything had more than one function. They are rendered as formal objects without a functional purpose. Their construction out of paper makes them not function, and it is this dichotomy that gives them their power. The paper serves as the leaves of books with written texts—diary entries, recollections, recipes and older methods of doing work.