DC artist Annie Broderick
Annie Broderick’s (anniebroderick.com) artistic breakthrough came in an unlikely place: the weight room. The DC artist had studied painting in Paris, where she fell in love with figure painting, crafted her own oil paint and was a copyist at the Louvre. “Fast-forward a decade, and I still identified as a painter until I discovered and developed a sudden passion for Olympic-style weightlifting,” says Broderick. “For the first time in my life, I felt my own physical power. I broke into sculpture naturally as a result of the physicality of my daily training and my new rapt attention to what it felt like in my body to use and strengthen my muscles.”
Suddenly, in her art practice, Broderick says she yearned to manipulate materials with weight and volume into forms that she could hold and mold in her hands. “I needed to be in my work, tangibly, and I needed to be physical with materials that called my name,” says the artist, whose recent sculptural work is a revelation of texture, form and the endless boundaries of beauty.
“Victory,” another textile sculpture, now hangs in wineLAIR in the West End
Her recent commission at wineLAIR, a European-style private wine club in the West End, came through Swatchroom (swatchroom.com). Titled “Victory,” the massive gold fabric sculpture hangs on the club’s wall. It takes an already sophisticated room to another level of brilliance. The piece, says Broderick, references the gold foil on Champagne bottles and is “aesthetically organic, like the process of fermenting grapes into fine wine. One by one, I placed each sculptural fabric mass onto the base and handstitched it into place with needle and thread. The process is organic and also requires me to be meticulous, paying attention to every single fold, every single stitch. I continued in this manner—arranging, placing and stitching all the layers—until I was happy with the overall composition and shape.”
Broderick’s creative impulses and affinity for weaving go back to childhood and her construction of elaborate forts in the woods. “I made a secret world—one that contained me and also set me free inside it—with my hands and some twine, pine branches and pine straw,” she says. “The building methods and the secret containment and freedom I felt then are present now in my sculptural work.”
“Gold Gloves” textile sculpture
Her work, as Broderick explains it, is going to get as expansive as her ambitions. “I want to go big in scale and concept,” she says. “I want to create an installation that fills a space and surrounds the viewer. I want to create a world— an experience.” With an impressive foundation of recent shows at McLean Project for the Arts (mpaart.org), along with support from spaces like Shop Made in DC (shopmadeindc.com) and Latela Curatorial (latelacuratorial.com), Broderick’s work will show at Long View Gallery (longviewgallerydc.com) in 2021. “I want to make work that stirs and moves people,” Broderick says. “I want the work’s power to cause them to feel their own power when they stand before it and interact with it.”
Photography by: Donovan Gerald
