The success of Michele Brody's work thrives on the interaction with new communities. She has maintained a 25 year-long career grounded on revealing social justice issues through multi-media installations that come to life by connecting people with a new understanding of the world surrounding them. Since receiving an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994 in Fiber and Material Studies, her focus has been on the creation of site-generated works of art that illuminate unobserved details of the everyday, and the challenges facing our environment as we manage the constant entropy surrounding us. Over the years while working as an artist-in-residence in France, Germany, Taiwan, Costa Rica, California, the Midwest and my home of New York City, her art career has developed into a process of working in collaboration with the public towards developing a body of work that focuses on being present within a place. She achieves this through a social practice of serving tea while listening to local and personal stories. The essence of her practice is to understand how we manage the constant flux of life by inviting community interaction across a virtual threshold constructed out of materials with meaning, such as handmade paper from seasonal detritus, living plants, light and tea to create a sense of elegance out of the simplest of gestures. Her intent is to evoke a visceral social encounter within a shared space that comments on the tenuous relationship between nature and humans within the built environment.
