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WHAT IS HOME?: KRYSTLE BROWN EXPLORES DISPLACEMENT AT KINGSTON GALLERY

“Within this exhibition lies a poignant exploration of the concept of “home,” delving beyond its physical embodiment to reveal the intricate tapestry of economic, societal and governmental structures that mold the pursuit of a secure dwelling.”

Fields Corner bench art will feature objects that remind residents of home

“Slán Abhaile is a beautiful homage to [Brown’s]mother’s roots, while exploring the ways we forge community amid the precarity of housing in a gentrifying city,” said Dory Klein, the community history and digitization specialist at the Boston Public Library, in an email.

NEW INSTALLATIONS IN EGLESTON SQUARE ADDRESS HOUSING INSECURITY, ENGAGE PUBLIC

“We’re not getting too abstract and talking distantly about the subject, that it’s always how it relates back to the person because that’s the most important part,” Brown said. “In the end, what we did was have everyone write about how the housing crisis affects them personally.”

Poughkeepsie exhibit explores nostalgia, generational identity by Linda Marston-Reid in the Poughkeepsie Journal

Multimedia artist Krystle Brown’s work explores economic class, ancestry, place, environment, and labor, questioning the idealization of the American narrative. “My work sits at the confluence of remembering/reliving pasts while enduring the hope and pain for better futures.”

FINDING (AND QUESTIONING) OBJECTIVITY by Jess Costello in The Boston Hassle

The specific memories explored through still life also change each time we access them. “A still life is the passage of time,” said Krystle Brown, creator of a stirring piece using her late father’s work shirt in what she calls a “time loop of warped nostalgia”. “Every time you revisit a memory, like sitting down to paint your still life composition, something has shifted slightly out of place. Someone’s smile is hazier now, their voices harder to hear. You don’t quite remember what color eyes they had. Until one day, the whole person is in a fog. Still life is the creation of memories.”

Fungible Tokens of Appreciation by Frankie Symonds in The Boston Hassle

“The Boston Hassle is pleased to present a selection of free digital artwork as a gesture against the monetization of literally anything that can be turned over for a buck, and to celebrate the reproducible nature of digital media. Enjoy.”

15,000 Days by b. Amore in Art in New England

“The entire presentation speaks to Brown’s deep love of humanity, her respect for working-class labor, and her concern for the world that she has inherited. An empty bottle is buried in the earth’s grave. Brown writes, “We may have buried our dead, but we have not buried ourselves.” Significantly, she offers each visitor a small bottle containing Peaks Island sand, a reminder of the preciousness of the earth, and a harbinger of hope.”

The Webster Court Project in Newton MA. by Vittoria Benzine in Street Art United States

“The space itself gave Webster Court a powerful angle in Brown’s mind, both for its style and location. “The Boston area is facing a significant housing shortage, especially for low-income families and individuals,” Brown explained. “This issue is further exacerbated for artists and creatives, who need affordable spaces for both living and working in a city. As artists creating work and exhibiting it in this vacant home, it became an almost metaphor of the struggles of living in a rapidly expanding and gentrifying metro area. Artists whose work may not directly touch upon this subject still had this philosophical lens due to being in the very space itself.”

The Webster Court Project by B Amore in Sculpture Magazine

“In How they live, Krystle Brown took the mandate to heart, bringing objects gathered from her defunct family home in North Chelmsford. Her roots in working-class America were reflected in an installation that combined tchotchkes with a pile of worn stuffed animals, a hand-crocheted throw on an old chair, and a line-up of 45 records on the mantelpiece of a once gracious room. For her, “houses represent the uneasy intersections of class division, capitalism, and the rituals of grief and loss through the lens of family structure.” Brown’s forceful autobiographical narrative, handwritten on the door, made the installation particularly powerful.”

the cult of cape ann: iartcolony explores a New England phenomenon by Olivia J. Kiers in Art in New England

Poetic works relied heavily on words and sound, or employed symbols that suggested elements of Cape Ann history or culture, often overlaid with mystery and emotion. Among these, Krystle Brown’s Better Gardens video follows a woman wandering through the abandoned settlement of Dogtown, where the famous Babson Boulders immortalized by Marsden Hartley are found. Background sounds like insects buzzing and twigs snapping are loud over the headphones as the woman silently lies down on a moss bed, or stops by a ruin…

When student work is well worth studying by Cate Mcquaid in the Boston Globe

“Krystle Brown, of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, has a hypnotic video of a ritual amid urban rubble.”