Brett Day windham

Brett Day Windham works in sculpture, collage and installation to convert the mundane into the miraculous. Her work complicates the way that we view materials in the world. Transformation occurs. It’s not yarn but hair extensions; it’s not textile but painted resin; it’s not soft but hard; it’s not treasure but trash. The results of these transformations often take the form of an object of ritual, pseudo-science or the carnival; these locations reify robust ideas of the uncanny, the surreal, and the places where faith meets matter.

Her work emerges through layers of thinking and waiting; she develops a hypothesis, chooses controls and materials, and performs an experiment. Windham derives her practice from fine art background as well as folk and craft tradition. Sewing, drawing and the handcrafted continue to be important to her process.

It is natural that her work alludes to magic, science, ritual and theater; however, specific readings of the cumulative narratives that occur remain open to a viewer’s interpretation. Adolescent exposure to tradition and ritual fascinated Windham. Moreover, it left her with a lingering feeling of being an outsider, observing and trying to make sense of other people’s beliefs. By investigating worlds exotic to her, she created a spiritual, magical world of her own.

Windham was born in Cambridge, England and grew up in Providence, RI, where artists, actors and the occasional ghost surrounded her. She graduated from Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, with a BA, in 1999, during which time she also studied at Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy. She continued on to receive a MFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, in 2010. In 2012 she received a solo exhibition at he University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor, ME. Windham lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.