Welcome to brandenbyers.com
How many faces have you seen today?
Be it from the mirror, in our dreams, at a distance, or up close face-to-face, the human face is everywhere in our lives. Advertisements spread smiling faces across billboards, television, and the internet while science and medicine continue to alter faces by way of knife, laser, and toxin. Some is understood of the specific places in the brain that recognize, symbolize, file and compute the many faces we see everyday, but much, much more remains a mystery.
It is within this mystery, the extraordinary vastness that encompasses how we unconsciously interpret the face, that my work as an artist undertakes to explore. Not so much as in the 'how' or 'why' the brain functions in regard to the face the way it does, but rather a focus on what information may potentially slip through or beyond in such a hard-wired process.
The first time I saw an informal masked performance, and before that, the first time I manipulated a puppet in my own hand, I was enchanted by the experience. My logical mind understood the fact that these were inanimate objects being brought to life by illusion, but my imagination did not once falter in the belief that these were objects full of life and full of animation.
Consider it a trick or a gift, masks and puppets have within them the potential to slip past the interpretation of the primitive brain into a realm most often times reserved for realistic reality. The complicated-simplification process of the brain when dealing with the face appears to produce marvelously exciting results under the proper conditions. The puppet, mask, and manipulated face seem to offer just such ripe conditions.
My journey so far has taken me from the building, sewing, and casting of puppets, to the making and performing of theatrical masks, to my current artistic exploration of the face and mask and the messages they can convey to the conscious viewer as well as the unconscious mind.
Please feel free to contact me through the contact form on this website (or if you have my business card, by phone or email) with any comments or inquiries and in most cases my response will follow within a day or two.
