First published 2014
Emilie Brzezinski started her artistic journey in the 1970s working with plastic, latex, and wood fiber materials. She created transparent resin tree casts and site-specific figurative molds, drawing inspiration from both Minimalism and natural forms. By the early 1990s, she had shifted her focus entirely to large-scale wood sculpture. Armed with chainsaws and axes, she transforms found wood into arches, bowls, chairs, columns, and discs. Her philosophy centers on respecting the individual character of each natural form while carving. She preserves the essential outline and gesture of trees, celebrating their knots, hollows, wounds, and cracks. The book documents over 80 works spanning her entire career, including Forest, a monumental installation of 46 tree trunks created between 1997 and 2005, and Family Trees, which combines sculpture and photography to portray her family members. Art historians John Beardsley, Barbara Rose, and Aneta Georgievska-Shine contribute essays alongside an introduction by her daughter Mika Brzezinski.
Genres: biography, art, 20th-century, biography-memoir, 21st-century, art-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family
Period: 1970s, 1990s, 1997-2005
200 pages · Hardcover · D.A.P.