Clare Burson

Closing Reception: Tuesday, June 21, 6pm to 9pm

Clare Burson’s dynamic mixed-media show, From Some Other Time, is Burson’s first solo exhibition and the inaugural show at The Shirley Project Space in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn

Burson is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Her current body of work spans her career as a singer-songwriter and musician and highlights her recent investigations as a ceramic sculptor and textile artist. Burson created the majority of the pieces in this show after March 2020, and their titles are taken from the lyrics of an unreleased song she wrote during the early days of the pandemic, “We’ve Been Here Before.”

Burson is a compulsive and prolific maker of objects. Her approach to materials is unexpected and fearless with a touch of humor. Using a mix of clay, fabric, found objects and photographs, the works in the exhibition are at once rough and refined, strange and exquisite. Burson forges a thoughtful tension between the past and the future while still radiating with the gravity of our time.

In addition to Clare’s physical artworks, there will be a sound piece that responds to and echoes the themes in the show.

We Never Left 2022

Sonic collage

Brian Siskind - composer, synthesizer

Leo Sidran - engineer, wurlitzer, bass, percussion

Clare Burson - songwriter, vocals, acoustic guitar

We Never Left is a sonic response to from some other time created out of field recordings, synthesizers, and sampled tracks from Burson’s unreleased song, “We’ve Been Here Before.” Punctuated by sharp intrusions of static and strings and projected from different locations throughout the gallery, Siskind’s sonic collage transforms from some other time into a multi sensory experience, positioning Burson’s work in a liminal place between uncertainty and resolution.

Originally from Tennessee, Burson received her BA degree in history from Brown University. She then spent over a decade recording albums and touring internationally as a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter. Her release, Silver And Ash, explored her grandmother’s escape from Nazi Germany. It was released by Rounder Records in 2010 and was featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and on NPR. Burson began her work as a visual artist in 2015, a few months after the birth of her second child. She studied at Greenwich House Pottery in New York City and Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado before establishing her ceramics practice out of Gasworks, a community studio based in Brooklyn. Today, Burson works primarily in ceramics, incorporating textiles and found objects into her sculptures.