Joy Broom

My work has a long history of layering elements of the Natural World. Biology has been a constant, and a grounding force in the way I see the world. Combining my biological drawings with inherited old family letters and photographs, the ongoing work has evolved to reflect broader aspects of Memory and History.

Now, in 2020, the very process of making this work—dismantling the albums, cutting up the photographs to tiny remnants and putting them back onto the drawings on the pages—oddly feels like ballast in these uncertain waters. The studio work itself feels safe, but the album pages were emptied, the order is gone, and I am part of this history. I’m still using the natural world to hang on for Dear Life, but I don’t entirely trust it anymore. This is the first time I’ve made work directly addressing my own mortality. 

Joy Broom has been featured in exhibitions at a wide range of venues. Solo shows include the the deYoung Museum’s Kimball Gallery as Artist-in-Residence, Stanford Art Spaces, the inaugural San Francisco stARTupArt Fair, Gear Box Gallery and Studio Quercus in Oakland, Off the Preserve in Napa, SFMOMA’s Artist Gallery, A440 Gallery and Bank of America in San Francisco, and the Carnegie Art Center in Walla Walla, Washington. She also has had solo exhibitions at Mia and Linda Hodges Galleries in Seattle, Washington.

Numerous group shows include the Berkeley Art Center, the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek, Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery in Lafayette, the Oakland Museum’s Collectors Gallery, the Triton Museum, the Bolinas Museum, Ann Street Gallery in upstate New York, and the Anchorage Museum of Art & History.