Kelly Brooks

Bio
Kelly Brooks grew up in the Salt Lake Valley near the Cottonwood Canyons. She received a BFA in Drawing and Painting from Brigham Young University in 2002 and a certificate in Art Education from Weber State University in 2004. Her artistic interests span several media but focus most on drawing and painting. She has worked with the Central Utah Art Center, directed the Museum School for the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, and is developing Granary Art Center in Ephraim. She currently lives in central Utah with her husband and two children where she teaches drawing and 2D design for the Department of Visual Art at Snow College.

Artist Statement
Movement Studies: Domestic Spaces

Lines are used in many ways to convey information. Artists use them in both literal and abstract ways. Lines can define the outer edge of a shape; they can determine positive and negative space; they can record the pattern of movement or gesture. Lines can be very literal, however, a physical object is not made of lines and more often than not the movement or gestures we record don’t leave actual lines. But linear information makes sense to us even if the line itself is an abstract idea.

For this work I take between five and twenty minutes of video of my family, including myself, within in a specific room of our home. Each drawing represents its own span of time in any one room of the house. I then watch each video at real time and, adapting the method used for blind contour drawing, I draw the path and impression of movement of each member of the family. Blind contour drawings are made by fixing one’s eyes on the subject and drawing its contour or outline continuously without lifting the pen or looking at the paper. In this case walking, running, crawling, jumping, dancing, sitting and other information is illustrated by line quality – the heavy, fine, bold, quick, or slow characteristics of the line – documenting the patterns of movement and interaction.