Knowing The West. An art exhibit featuring 19th and 20th century
The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens’ newest exhibit, Knowing the West, opens to the public on Friday, March 28 and runs through August 31, 2025.
- Rebecca Braziel, a multimedia artist, has a studio at Arts Southeast in Savannah.
- Her upcoming project, *Home Studio Style*, involves two-month collaborations with other artists, focusing on fibers and wearable art.
- The project aims to showcase the artistic process and allow the public to engage with the artists’ creative spaces.
A petite and vivacious mother of four who barely looks older than her college freshman daughter, Rebecca Braziel is a multimedia artist with a Bull Street-facing studio at Savannah’s Arts Southeast. I recently met her in her calm, white studio space, which will shortly be transformed for her forthcoming Home Studio Style series.
Braziel grew up in Walthourville outside of Hinesville, Georgia, and despite having neither art classes in school nor exposure to museums or galleries, she always knew she wanted to be an artist. Initially enrolling in fashion at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), her academic advisor recognized she seemed more intrigued by the fabric than by the construction of the garment, and recommended she switch her major to fibers.
Braziel graduated SCAD with a BFA in Fibers in 2008, later earned a prestigious six-month residency at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and then a teaching-artist position at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. During the pandemic, missing open spaces and the support of family, she returned to Savannah and has since developed a practice that includes fiber installations, mixed media sculptures, and paintings on paper. She shows work through SCAD Art Sales, serves as a Fibers Department Alumni Mentor, and was awarded an artist residency at nonprofit Arts Southeast in 2021.
‘I want to help build the art community here’
Two years ago she began renting Studio 10. “I became part of this community with Arts Southeast because I want to help build the art community here.”
She intentionally chose not to create in her tiny 7.5-foot-by-7.5-foot studio, but rather to showcase fun and innovative collaborations during the organization’s First Friday events. These included partnerships with Savannah-based composer and sound designer Joshua Alexander, and one with former Jepson curator Anne-Solene Bayan, who, inspired by Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf, invited visitors to mark and rip sheets of paper before transforming the little, torn pieces into beautiful installations. Other innovative projects included filling her studio with a huge mound of marsh wrack collected on the shore of Wilmington Island, and collaborating with the ever-thoughtful installation artist Kevin Kirkwood on projecting images and videos onto suspended plaster forms in an exploration of the clash between personal privacy and desire for community.
It is this desire for community that is central to much of Braziel’s work and was the impetus behind moving into the larger, street-facing, Studio 14 a year ago. “I’m here because I love interacting with the public. That’s what makes me do things every First Friday.”
In this light-filled space, Braziel has room to make and display her own work while continuing her collaborations with other artists. Most recently, she spent time with fibers artist Katie Glusica, transforming buoys and other maritime detritus and natural objects into stunning installations using handmade fishing line and silk nets for the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum’s Supper at Sea.
On magical trips to Ossabaw Island and on her frequent nature hikes, she’s gathered natural materials to include in art pieces. Always drawing joy and spiritual strength from her time in nature and feeling depleted if not around it, she says, “I’m settling into this confidence that I can work with found natural objects. That they can be taken seriously as material that has value.”
‘That’s where the magic happens’
Braziel’s upcoming project is a series of two-month-long, fibers-focused collaborations entitled Home Studio Style. “January is my month of contemplation. I try not to make any commitments so I can plan my year. During that time, I realized I wanted to lean into fibers, and to work with artists I’m drawn to because their aesthetic or style pervades everything they do. If you see them on the street, if you go into their studio, or go into their home, it’s all consistently ‘them’.
“Particularly with the street style, I just want people to have fun with what they wear and how they express themselves. I think fashion is a gift to the world. When you wear something fun and exciting, you stimulate others. You have a lot of power to effect people.”
During April, Braziel is partnering with 2023 SCAD Fibers MFA artist Pheobe Plank, currently living in Lacoste, France, but in Savannah to show her work during May 2nd’s First Friday events. (Plank’s MFA Thesis exhibition at Gallery 2424 was, for me, a highlight of last year’s art calendar: her show consisted of an extensive collection of found object sculpture focusing on sticks and twigs, as well as accompanying material studies in wood, felt, pine needles, and natural dyes.)
The first month of their two-month collab is a time to talk, explore, and jointly create. Braziel feels that the actual process of making art is often lost. “People see the finished product, but for artists the exciting part is the making. I want the public to have more access to the life of the artist and the studio. That’s where the magic happens.” She posits that “the art world feels focused on the end result, oftentimes not sharing the magic of the process and people behind it. The work is plucked out of context of the creative space. Seeing the artist’s outfits, desk, and process gives a fullness to the work.”
After Pheobe Plank, the Home Studio Style collaborators are photographer, painter, folk and installation artist Nathaniel Ryan Thompson (August prep and September First Friday) and Trish Andersen (November prep and December First Friday). Braziel describes Andersen as a “maximalist lover of pattern and fibers” who recently showed her tufted artwork in the Wild Frontier show at Laney Contemporary.
Home Studio Style is an immersive experience representing the artists through wearable objects, home objects, and studio objects that are either personally theirs, or that they create together. “I will collaborate with the artists to select things that embody their personality and their aesthetic. Each object in the space will be made or found by myself and the artist in hopes of not only allowing you to peek into their world but also taking a little part of it away with you. [The projects are] a continuation of my focus on reuse, mending, altering, and collaboration.” Braziel and the guest artist will offer a fibers-based workshop during the second month, produce a streetstyle zine, and jointly make one fibers-focused wearable garment focusing on re-purposed, vintage fashion.
“You don’t have to have a lot of money to be stylish, “ she says, “It all goes back to being from a big family. Everything is a hand-me-down….You look forward to inheriting that sweater from your big sister and if it’s too big, you just belt it.”
Part curator, part gallerist, part co-creator, Braziel’s collaborative experiences feel like a multi-disciplinary and joyful continuation of this theme. “I just love being part of a big family of artists! For our visitors on First Friday, I want to promote serious fun and give the reminder that if you are intentional with how you dress and the objects you surround yourself with, they become opportunities to bring humor, curiosity, beauty, or excitement to your day and the people around you.
“I’m excited. It feels like whatever I come up with, I can do. I love how this space is constantly changing.”
Follow Braziel’s Home Studio Style collaborations on Instagram @rebeccabraziel and visit her website at rebeccabraziel.com. Her studio is located at Arts Southeast, 2301 Bull St., in Savannah’s Starland neighborhood. Follow Arts Southeast on Instagram @artssoutheast for First Friday information.
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