Read the article here: http://www.eglobaltravelmedia.com.au/tangled-up-in-supernatural-realms/

“Everything is interconnected, all that we know and everything we have yet to discover,” says the artist Carol Brown Goldberg about her new exhibition Tangled Nature at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU in Miami. The exhibition features 52 recent artworks, most exhibited for the first time. Goldberg takes a cue from the Surrealists by using the technique of automatic drawing ―  allowing her hand to overrun the canvas in a wild, untamed flow, to allow the subconscious to take over.

For even greater immediacy while creating this new series, Goldberg worked mostly in a mono-chromatic approach, with acrylic markers instead of brushes to reduce time by not having to mix paint colors. “This past year has been an age of anxiety for our world, and my use of black-and-white echoes the pertinent yearning for clarity,” adds Goldberg.

The exhibition is curated by Klaudio Rodriguez and features ink on paper, acrylic on canvas and acrylic pen on canvas. On view through May 21 at the Florida International University campus located in southwest Miami (directions).

Setting her hands free from the conscious mind, the artist inscribes lines and images that take on a life of their own, creating worlds that are almost extra-terrestrial.

The resulting experience inside the museum’s galleries evokes trance-like states for the viewer, fantasies derived from Goldberg’s inspiration from science, nature, spiritual technology and, especially, cutting-edge particle physics.

“Every single moment in time contains the past, present and future, all entangled together from the edges of the cosmos all the way back to ancient civilizations.”

Goldberg’s process is purely free-flowing, “Whatever appears on the surface is meant to come to the surface and can be compared to the Zen state of emptying the mind,” says the artist.

“When I work, my hand is not fighting my thoughts. I’m immersed in a meditative, rhythmic state. With one part of my brain I listen to books on tape or a lecture and take in information, and simultaneously with the other side of my brain I’m creating, taking my line on a journey.”

The artist’s body of work titled Extravagant Eden, transports the viewer to faraway, dreamlike gardens that mysteriously unravel across terrains of sinewy lines.

Through the outlines of her automatic drawing, Goldberg creates natural spaces that are vast – tendrils, vines, flowers and pods, roots and trunks all intertwine, mirroring the Butterfly Effect of Chaos Theory.

Foliage explodes into spontaneous growth, each vine hedging out the other, reaching for its share of sun, air and space.

These biomorphic free-flowing creations also traverse beyond the natural world, exploring the complex webs of human relationships that ensnare all of us.

Goldberg’s work pays homage to 20th-century masters such as Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger and Stuart Davis. Unbroken lines and bold colors figure prominently in Goldberg’s work.

Although her work is guided by her subconscious, Goldberg’s lines and colors are deliberate, controlled and at times extremely intricate.

“Carol is constantly experimenting with techniques and cross-disciplinary theory,” says the Director of the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University,
Dr. Jordana Pomeroy.  “Her intricate, detailed works are a reminder to us all that creativity, innovation, and energy propel the artistic process.”

The museum has created a large-scale collaborative mural project within the galleries.

Taking on a life of its own, the mural has drawn in hundreds of participants including FIU students, professors, museum staff, docents, adults taking art classes, and many school groups from nearby Sweetwater Elementary School (who only receive one hour of art class per week).

“This fantastic mural project has come alive as a never-ending creation without boundaries,” adds the artist. A continual work-in-progress, Goldberg returns on-site regularly throughout the duration of the exhibition to join her mural compatriots on this creative journey.

“This mural is linking multiple visions into one organic collaboration, with never-ending lines that connect every person’s contribution,” adds Goldberg.

The exhibition will next travel to the American University Museum in Washington, DC. For more information about the artist and her work, visit carolbrowngoldberg.com.

View this video from the Phillips Collection, featuring Curator Klaus Ottmann discussing the One-on-One series, an exhibition where works by Carol Brown Goldberg were placed in conversation with Henri Matisse’s Interior with Egyptian Curtain.

A group of 40 students huddled together over a canvas. Indie pop and rock music played in the background. With black markers firmly in hand, the students searched for the perfect place to make their mark.

These Honors College students were some of the more than 100 people who worked on two murals alongside renowned artist Carol Brown Goldberg at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum.

The project –part of Tangled Nature, an exhibit featuring Goldberg’s works, currently on display at the Frost until May 21 – invited all of FIU to try their hand at drawing the murals. Inspired by Goldberg’s vision, the murals depict jungles, foliage and forests.

A perk of the project was getting to meet Goldberg. Many of the groups who drew on the mural got a personal tour of Goldberg’s Tangled Nature exhibit from the artist herself. She discussed her artwork, themes and inspirations.

“This is so gratifying. It feels like an authentic experience,” Goldberg says. “It’s people interacting, losing themselves in play. The students here are so warm. It feels like they love school, and they are enthusiastic. This museum is a very dynamic environment. When you have 40 people in a room drawing with music going…to me, it means that art has power.”

The interconnectedness of all things and the beauty of harmony and symmetry are a few themes present in the mural and reflective of Goldberg’s exhibit.

“In real life, foliage grows naturally and finds the light,” Goldberg says. “I see that as inspiration to myself and, hopefully, to others. I look at marks as moments of our lives. So, I like filling up space. That way, we’re marking the footprints of our lives.”

Computer science and math major Alex Lugo, who drew on the mural with his Honors College classmates, found a vivid example of interconnectedness in the murals.

“Everyone’s contributions came together to form part of the piece. It’s a really cool project that wasn’t done when we left that day. It’s going to be continued by people who we don’t know. It’s going to be the whole FIU community. You won’t know who worked on top of your work. The mural has a life of its own.”

Besides Lugo’s class, numerous fine arts classes and even an English composition class as well as individual students, faculty and administrators from all across campus participated.

More than 200 kindergarteners and first graders from Sweetwater Elementary School also visited. The field trip to the Frost included the children taking a tour of the museum and learning about several of the exhibits currently on display. The children also got to meet Goldberg, hear what it’s like to be an artist and work on a smaller mural to take back to their school.

“This is a great opportunity for these students,” says Betty Rodriguez, who teaches first grade at Sweetwater Elementary. “Many of them have one vision of art. They may think it’s paper, pencils and crayons. Now they’re learning about things like photography as art.”

This event is part of the Frost Art Museum’s STEAM Works initiative – a collaboration with the school to remove barriers to cultural experiences their students may face.

Frost Education Curator Miriam Machado, who led several of the tours with the children, says at least half of the students in her tours had never been to a museum before.

“This is what a university museum should be doing,” Machado says. “[Smithsonian scholar] Stephen Weil said it’s about museums going from something to being about somebody. This is what we are doing: being about our students and our community. The murals project makes me feel we are advocating for the importance of the arts.”

Frost Art Museum Director Jordana Pomeroy says the project exemplifies the goals of the museum. “The Frost Art Museum is a hub of creative activity for everyone in the FIU community. We will continue with these efforts to bring together our community in this intimate space for meditation, reflection and creativity.”

Goldberg will return to the Frost Art Museum, and work with students and community members Wednesday, March 22, through Friday, March 24. If you are interested in participating in the community mural project or bringing a group to work on it, email frosteducation@fiu.edu.

TANGLED NATURE
Painting and Works on Paper by Carol Brown Goldberg
February 11 – May 21, 2017
Opening Reception: February 11, 4-7 pm
Frost Art Museum at Florida International University
10975 S.W. 17th Street, Miami, Florida 33199

Acrylic on canvas, 96 x 84 inches, 2016

Summary of Exhibition
Carol Brown Goldberg has long been interested in exploring the relationship between art, science and nature. Through the use of wildly expressive lines, saturated colors and repetition, she explores a wide range of themes such as the nature of symbiotic relationships, the evolution of memory, and the contrast between chaos and order.

Goldberg’s artistic process is at once both controlled and free. Taking her cues from automatic drawing developed by the Surrealists, Goldberg’s hand meanders across the canvas. In applying chance and accident to her mark-making process, she allows the unconscious mind to hold great sway. Hence the works she produces may be attributed, in part, to the subconscious and thus reveal something of the psyche, which would otherwise be repressed.

Tangled Nature refers to the artist’s approach the complexity inherent in human relationships as well as the visual appearance of the natural world. Over the course of her career, Goldberg has returned again and again to automatic drawing, this time to produce a series of paintings and drawings that create, what seem like, mysterious complex biological landscapes. These organic, almost extraterrestrial, worlds comprise shapes likened to plants, flowers and microscopic organisms that intertwine together to form strange towering jungles that surround the viewer in an unexplored reality.

Carol Brown Goldberg was born in Baltimore, MD. She moved to the Washington, DC metro area after graduating from the University of Maryland with a B.A. in American Studies. She subsequently pursued her studies at the Corcoran School of Art under Gene Davis, where she was awarded the Eugene M. Weisz award upon graduation. She has taught at American University and the University of Maryland, was Artist-in-Residence at the Chautauqua Institute, and is a recipient of the Maryland State Arts Award.

She has shown in the U.S. and internationally in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions. Her work is included in many museums and private collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, as well as outdoor sculpture installations at the Kreeger Museum and the Katzen Arts Center at American University

Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 36 inches, 2016