The North Brooklyn Community News - GREENLINE
“Crossing Brooklyn”
Deborah Masters Creates “Angel in Crown Heights”

NY- Opening January 6, 2003, a new series of works entitled “Crossing Brooklyn” will be exhibited at Brooklyn Pubic Library’s Central Library on Grand Army Plaza. The series, free and open to the public, will present new works by Brooklyn artists whose innovative sculptures reflect enduring aspects of life in the borough. This exhibition is organized for Brooklyn Public Library by Smack Mellon and curetted by Marian Griffiths. The series will continue with works by Tom Kotik March 6 – April 25 and by John Beech Mary 2 – June 27.
Deborah Masters, known for such works as her 28-panel “walking New York” reliefs at JFK International Airport, “Sacred Matter” at Smack Mellon Studios, “Circle” in the Whitney Museum of American Arts’s “Urban Figures” show, and “Pong Virgins” created for Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, will open the series with a new installation entitled “Angel in Crown Heights.” The installation will be on view in the Lobby Gallery January 6 – February 27, 2003, with an artist’s talk Saturday, January 11 at 2 pm. In tandem with “Angel in Crown Heights,” will be an exhibition of the preliminary drawings of Masters’ work for JFK International Airport on view in the Central Library Balcony Cases on the second floor. It’s been great creating a work about Brooklyn to exhibit at a public venue like Brooklyn Public Library,” says Deborah Masters. “It gives me the opportunity to bring my work to people who will relate to the installation as a familiar community experience. It’s sharing my work with an extended family,”
“Angel in Crown Heights: is a site-specific work of a larger than-life sculpture of Angel and three large black and white drawings overlaying the three walls of the rectangular Lobby Gallery space. The figure is based on Master’s assistant Angel Mohammed. The sculpture of Angel, seated on a box and drawing on his knee, is cast in Ultra cal and painted in earth tones with a dull finish. Angel sits within the context of the three drawings, of the crown Heights neighborhood where he grew up. One drawing, situated on the central wall of the gallery, depicts stairs leading up to the front door of his brownstone, with adjacent drawings featuring the buildings on either side.
The combination of the two mediums of sculpture and drawing create a provocative juxtaposition of weight and textures in Master’s work. Her figures are massively stated, yet her themes frequently have to do with our transit through this world, our environment, and our place in it. Her work seems to suggest figures of ‘everyman’, endowed with the intrinsic weight of life, journeying through with the epic struggles that face us all. There is nothing small or provincial about the way Masters sees or renders humanity in her sculptures. Like the monumental figures of Aristide Maillol or of classical Greek sculpture, the weight of human experience is substance made live in Masters’ work. The cultures, textures, and imperfection of humanity as rendered in the human figure are both representative and specific in her work. The personal is the historic, and vice versa.
Brooklyn Pubic Library offers a range of exhibitions and cultural programs year-round at the Central Library and branches to highlight the arts and humanities in Brooklyn. BPL provides public venues to showcase the work of established and emerging artists, frequently bringing the work of Brooklyn-based artists and smaller non-profit arts organizations to a wider audience.