Meet Charissa Brock

We recently connected with Charissa Brock and have shared our conversation below.

Charissa, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

How did you find your purpose?
I believe that finding purpose is a continual process. We are multi-purposed, our storyline is continually growing, and every lesson we learn is a healing which brings us closer to purpose. When we choose to share our healing we can help others work towards their healing too. Growing up in an artists household, surrounded by a few generations of craftspersons and plant growers I took it for granted that time spent making things of beauty was time well spent. My parents were supportive of creative pursuits and my sister and I were given free reign of the tools and scrap piles of materials. We learned from relatives, school teachers, and friends how to cut and solder glass, nail wood together, work with clay, sew, and weave as young people. In essence, our house was a crafts school. Summers with my grandparents in Oregon were a contrast to the stark New Mexico landscape our school years were spent in. My grandfather, a flower farmer, taught me to look closely at things in nature and that nature was as sacred as church is to some folks. Days were spent wandering their farm submersed in the landscape learning a farm to table approach to life before it was cool.
Although I loved to read and would loose myself for hours doing so I was diagnosed early with a learning disability and found math, and school in general, very challenging. I found solace from a chaotic childhood in the making of beautiful things. I never decided to become an artist, I felt I was born an artist, and that I was doing what I was born to do. My dilemma of purpose started in an undergraduate art school in Detroit, College of Create Studies, where I was asked to choose a medium, define what I was doing, and put words to it. I tried all different materials, flipping back and forth between glass and fibers. I was not finding answers to the questions when asked about my material, form and process, just more questions. Because of the way I was wired as a child in the house I grew up in I internalized this as a fault, not an asset. However, out of a love of beauty and creativity I persevered. I started to create objects out of the lovely leaves and seeds that dropped from trees and bushes we did not have in New Mexico, intrigued by their patterns, shapes, and colors. Once the objects were made I would cast them in glass, honoring a traditional crafts material that I had grown up with, destroying the original natural material object in the glass mold making process. Through a kiln accident the mold of a piece I had spent a lot of time on had fallen apart and I was heart broken at all the work down the drain. Then I realized that the original objects made from natural materials were actually the art I loved to make. Just because I had not seen maple seeds and ginko leaves used as art material did not mean I was doing anything wrong. At this point I realized my medium was natural materials, even though it was not a material traditionally taught in art schools at the time. Now, having literally broken the mold, I gained confidence in my unique artistic vision and started to work solely with the natural materials I found cast off naturally from nature. Although I did not see it at the time, moving away from traditional craft materials was a way of claiming my own path and voice, separate from that of my families, or other societal structures. I felt I was, in a way, collaborating with and moving towards nature. I created systems of patterns with seeds and leaves to create forms with, incorporating contemporary fiber arts techniques. This work became about the process and the systems I created, the connection with nature, and the continual growth and change nature, and we, go through. When I found the material which spoke to me I found the words to express and and write about why I created. I continued with this body of work with maple seeds, ginko leaves and reclaimed tree bark for five years, with gallery shows, the meeting of other amazing artists who work with natural materials, and community.
In 1998 I entered a graduate program in Fibers at Tyler School of Art, knowing by then that natural materials were used in basketry and fiber arts. I was urged to break out of my materials and methods. Pennsylvania offered different plants. I explored working with wood, tree bark, vines, and smoke tree sticks and leaves. At that point I had learned to solidify my understanding of my creative process with the help of my professor Rebecca Medel; and that what I was doing was creating simple gestures over and over again with material, in order to create a complex structure. To me, these simple gestures were meditative acts, transporting me to a space of stillness and deep contemplation, which in itself was healing. It was during this time I was invited to gather material from a bamboo grove. I had never been to a bamboo grove and was curious what it might have to offer. At a local art center the grounds keeper lead me through a forest to the bamboo grove. When I saw the bamboo grove I was awestruck. The tall vertical culms, the horizontal branches, and the leaves all slowly swayed in the breeze. It looked to me like a living breathing tapestry and I started to have images come to my head, quickly, one after the other. I felt I was being talked to by the bamboo and recognized the imagery as infinite possibilities in the collaborative working with this plant. Years later I recognize this as a download of information from spirit and my choosing to work with it another faithful step towards my own intuition. Within a year I had a body of work made from bamboo using techniques I had developed and started to exhibit the work nationally. The doubt I had about my mathematical skills was replaced by a new intuitive type of math I created out of the necessity of building structure. What I once saw as a deficit in my mathematical skillset I now see as an asset to the way in which I work. I have felt that I am walking the path of my purpose for years, making, exhibiting, and teaching. I love bringing beauty into others lives, and creating challenges for myself in order to find further complexity, or simplicity, of form. Over time a narrative has emerged in the process of building bodies of work, one full of mystery, a language without works which encompasses past, present, and future stories. Bamboo, in the techniques I have developed, has become as familiar to me as if it were a part of me, a second language with which I speak in signs and symbols, offering to others a story without words.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I work with bamboo, glass, thread, paper, and stones to create one of a kind and small run edition sculptures. The pieces can be small enough to fit in the palm of your hand or large enough to fill a two story atrium. I gather my bamboo in bamboo groves near my home, making friends in the process. I use traditional Japanese tools to prepare my bamboo into strips as well as woodworking and fiber arts techniques. Bamboo is an amazing plant and art material. I believe the sky is the limit as to what can be done with bamboo. I believe it truly is a plant that can heal the world. I teach how to work with bamboo as an art material and exhibit my work throughout the USA. I am open to doing commissions and love working to design beautiful things for spaces. My work can be found at www.charissabrock.com

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Just three? Patience, perseverance, attention to detail, intuitive faith in my creative path, knowing when rules can be broken, and the slow growing knowledge that my own unique vision may not be enveloped by the whole world but will affect and help the people who need it and are open to it have all been impactful. Lastly, learning to have an open heart has made this journey so much richer. These qualities are developed over time. There were messages of these skillsets in my environment as a young child. My message for others to help develop is to listen to your heart and do what sets you on fire, what you love so much you’ll loose track of time, then wake up and bound out of bed joyfully to do it all over again because it nurtures you. Do what you love so much that when you don’t have the energy to bound out of bed you and the opportunities don’t arrive you still show up to it because it is your comfort, your solace, your spiritual practice.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

When I was a little girl of about five or six my parents enrolled me in a watercolor painting class at a local art center in New Mexico. During the first assignment we were shown how rubber cement could be used to block off areas of the paper so it could remain white while the rest of the paper was colored. At the end of the class we were allowed to peel off the rubber cement to expose the white areas of the paper, which could be interpreted as light or white. We were given National Geographic magazines to look through and choose a image this assignment would work well with. I found an image of an aspen forest, and was struck by its beauty. The white bark, the black knotholes where young branches might have formed, the yellow leaves glistening in the sun all called to me to be painted. I spent the time enamored with the process of blocking off the white paper with glue, adding the black of the knotholes, yellow of the leaves, and the dappled green forest floor. It was magical to peel off the rubber cement in the end to expose the whole painting, white bark and all. When my mom came to pick me up the teacher told her I was unsuccessful and probably wouldn’t be an artist. My parents thought the painting was beautiful, and as artists themselves, could see the forest and my interpretation of it as valuable. They framed the painting, hung it in the living room, and when their artist friends came over would show it to them. Everyone would agree that teacher was wrong, that I had a gift, and I should continue to use it. They had faith and sight of my gifts before I did, and let me know it. They showed me that just because your value is not obvious to someone, just because someone tells you you don’t have value or a gift, does not mean that is the reality. Faith in what brings you joy is what matters, and for me that was creativity.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Dan Kvitka, Ryan Schultis, Sam Hayes, Aaron Wessling

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