Charlee Brodsky

My stage is a piece of wood, the top of an old tool chest, 14” wide, 35” long, and just an inch high. It sits on a pedestal close to a window that gets filtered, rarely direct, light. Rocks, pigs, balls, flowers, binder clips, rabbits, an occasional grape tomato, and other miscellaneous things that I collected through the years, recently ordered on Ebay and/or picked up on the street,are my actors. They’re also my friends. They have personalities.

I bond less with the perfectly manufactured binder clips, but the other creatures and objects, and especially the rocks, have individual spirits that I respond to. Many have endeared themselves to me—I love the dog with half a tail; I still feel sorry for the bunny that is missing a leg; and for whatever reason, I talk and coo to the pigs. They are my perfect, imperfect collaborators that I work with to create stories of innocence, joy, affectation, impending doom, hope, as well as of other conditions that I see and partake in. Implicit in this work are my values and some commentary about the world in which I live and the world I would like to inhabit.

I started this series shortly before the COVID pandemic in 2019 and I continue it today.
As the world is shaken by wars and natural disasters— interrupted by some glimmering good things, too—I go up to the studio on the third floor of my home, and with my “little friends,” try to make sense of it.