Briana McCarthy
Art Practice and Supporting Work
Art Rituals
My art practice is fairly formulaic in its structure, but still allows some room to move. The must haves are writing, culminating in at least one poem, and a playlist to work to. I first sketch and write about an idea. Once it is specific enough and I start to have a clearer vision of what the piece will look like, I write a poem. The seeds of that poem are often in my initial writing alongside my sketches, formed into clusters of keywords and phrases. After the poem comes the playlist that I will listen to every time I work on the piece it was intended for.
How Monstrous If I Healed
How Monstrous If I Healed, 2024, acrylic on wood, 5 1/2 x 5 5/8 x 1/2 inch
Sketch Notes: Complying with societal expectation/ritual, causing the individual harm. Sacrifice of personal wellbeing to fit in. Societal pressures surrounding grief
Along with the external loss, there is an internal loss of self. Grief transforms so you are simultaneously mourning your loved one and your past self.
Open Wound
How monstrous
if I healed
and never cried
for you again
Originally, this piece did not have a bandaged finger, despite noting that as a possible necessity in my original sketch notes. I liked the nakedness of the hands. However, feedback from my peers proved that many read the missing fingers as folded over and it took the viewers a long time to connect the number of fingers on the necklace to the number that were missing. The bandage helps to move the viewer in the direction of missing fingers and indicates a fresher wound among the older ones, where the skin has grown over where the finger was cut.
Soft and Savage
Soft and Savage, 2024, cotton cord and wire, 13 1/2 x 12 x 6 inch
In 2021 I painted a piece called Kill It which explored unwanted feelings and the desire to extinguish them completely. Before naming the piece, I referred to it as "rabbit in a ribcage". That phrase stuck with me and I even called the work this instead of its title in an early group crit. The response to the phrase was strong and, for me, evolved into a metaphor for anxiety. That experience kickstarted the creation of Soft and Savage.
Hares were going to be included, painted on two pieces of wood, the lungs, and tied within the ribcage. There was quite more there in the materials and the knotting than I expected and, after speaking with tutors and failing to fit the "lungs" in the cage, I decided not to include them. I'm happy with that decision.
I became hyperfocused on having the dimensions of the ribcage accurate for a woman my age. This was, in part, to make sure that the "lungs" would fit, though they didn't very well in the end. I was also convinced, and still am, that it wouldn't look right or I wouldn't be able to connect with it strongly enough if it wasn't fairly accurate. I didn't expect it to be so small.
Soft and Savage
This soft and savage wound
A chiming, aching, bleeding echo in an empty courtyard…but for me
I am emptiness
I cannot touch you, so I'll touch nothing at all
How beautiful, a life that mangles in its end
How beautiful, a love that undoes you
I will tear myself apart to keep your shadow close
I Am Not
Where have I gone?
I am hollowed out, yet full to bursting
A vicious, bloated emptiness
I am only the things that have hurt me
I am not…
Infestation
Infestation, 2024, acrylic on wood with air dry foam clay and metal chain, 32 x 13 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch
Sorrow’s Garden
I thought I felt the burrowing as it chewed into my core
It was not burrowing, but a blooming
Bright despair unfurling
I the Mother, the living well of this pain
Bring a comforting word and you risk the reaching tendrils
Sorrow’s garden, wild and unmanageable
I can offer you naught but an unfair trade: pain for kindness
I didn't have a clear path through this piece very early on. I knew I wanted a hare and the worms breaking through. I Didn't know how I was going to practically accomplish that. I was also unsure which hare, of all that I had been drawing, that I preferred, so I made 3.
I worked from least to most liked of my 3 discs. The first fell out the running early on. I thought the second was the one and ended up creating a complete piece, seen with the wormy goo climbing the threads that are holding it and burrowing into the wood. This, in the end, felt too messing. The tension was gone because the worms had already eaten their way into the display hanger. The amount of worms also felt too little and I found myself instinctively trying to manipulate the shape of the worms so they were visually balanced. I actively pushed against that urge because the spirit of the piece calls for dysregulation and discomfort.
Methods and Materials
Wood as a Painting Surface
The use of wood as a painting surface is recurrent throughout my practice. Wood and trees are laden with meaning across cultures and have so since before humans could articulate it. I am borrowing the intellectual and emotional weight that has been bound to the material aver ages. Nature is also a meditative space for me, so the handling and examining of a piece of wood helps settle me so I can think and focus more clearly.
Beyond the spiritual weight, I enjoy the challenge of finding the right piece of wood and then working within its constrictions: size, cracks, grain, and color all effect the work I make. Having those boundaries to challenge me helps me grow and stay flexible as an artist.
The Right Visual Texture
When working on Infestation, I needed the worm structures to look a little gross, slimy, oily...polluted. I tried a thinned out glossy paint to start, but it still looked dry in the end and the excess happily dripped off the worms. I needed a little stickiness and coagulation, so I mixed craft glue with the glossy paint, adding glue and water, until I got the consistency right: it had a bit of glop to it, but not too much, and it was hard to tell when it was dry.
I proceeded to dip, dry, add more worms, dip again, etc, until it felt right.