Bio

Vanessa Brook Williams is an Atlanta-based artist whose delicate work ranges from small sculptures to room-sized installations.

She grew up in Decatur, GA, in front of her father’s lens and in the dust of her mother’s ceramic studio. This happy childhood laid the groundwork for her creative pursuits as an adult. Over the years, she has focused on the technical and conceptual development of her work through research in her studio with the community and educational institutions' support. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2007 and completed a Post Baccalaureate at Burren College of Art in 2010. In 2013-2014 she was a recipient of Mint Gallery’s emerging artist fellowship, Leap Year, and has been a fellow of the Hambidge Center since 2014. She was a finalist for the Forward Arts Foundation’s Emerging Artist Award in 2015-16 and 2017-18. She was a 2017-18 Hughley Fellow.

Artist Statement

The complex way we experience our surroundings is the underlying theme in my practice as a sculptor and installation artist. Relating the distance between your chest to the horizon, your toes in the grass to the topmost branches of an oak, and the warmth felt atop your head to the sun beaming above are all experiences as visceral as they are intellectual. I intend to create unusual experiences by utilizing the referential qualities of objects and imagery alongside the formal elements of materials and space to create works that intermingle the familiar with the unfamiliar. By implementing scale, principles of drawing within three-dimensional spaces, and the properties of both light and media, I emphasize or alter how space is perceived. It is a means to highlight the intellectual space we inhabit in our relationship to our surroundings and objects.