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Jason Sheridan Brown received his M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1999, and has been teaching Sculpture at the University of Tennessee since 2001. Brown’s artwork has been exhibited nationally, including solo and group exhibits in Arizona, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Recent public art projects include large-scale outdoor sculpture installations at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota; North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville, North Carolina; Josephine Sculpture Park in Frankfort, Kentucky; and Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, Minnesota. In the past year, he has had solo and two-person gallery installations at Lexington Art League in Kentucky and Ground Floor Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee.

He is involved in a number of collaborative public art projects in an effort to engage in civic dialogues about individual, community, and place. Throughout his art and teaching, Brown emphasizes interdisciplinary cooperation amongst creative thinkers such as his current traveling exhibitions and curatorial projects with the Land Report Collective. His work engages other disciplines including architecture, ecology and landscape design.

"As an artist, my work includes sculpture, performance, and installation. I temporarily transform places through actions that create a confounding spectacle in order to question routine patterns and social norms. Designed to invite audience participation, I want my objects and projects to challenge users to engage in a civic dialogue about individual, community, and place.

My sculptures are situated in urban and rural landscapes in order to question human relationships with the natural world. I am particularly interested in exploring transitional spaces where growth and destruction are happening simultaneously. Urban examples might include abandoned industrial spaces such as factories that are no longer operational, but have historical relevance to contemporary culture and future post-industrial purpose.

My recent work explores mountainous landscapes and rural cultures through a series of projects that question the controversial practice of mountaintop removal coal mining that is now prevalent throughout Southern Appalachia. This destructive mining practice is dramatically changing our regional landscape throughout rural Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky.

I am also creating new work that engages viewers in a conversation about the environmental cost of energy extraction from the earth as it relates to our human wants and needs in a consumer culture."

- Jason S. Brown (2016)

* Images of steel & schematic courtesy of the artist. Many works pictured are in progress.