Best in Show
Best in Show
Southern Tier Biennial winner to exhibit work at Tri-County Arts Council
Photo / Tri-County Arts Council
OLEAN – The Tri-County Arts Council presents “Buck Up Buttercup” featuring 2023 Southern Tier Biennial Best in show winner, Tammy Renée Brackett, September 21 through October 26 in the Peg Bothner Gallery at the Tri-County Arts Council, 110 West State Street in Olean, NY. Public reception, September 21st 5-7pm.
The Southern Tier Biennial is held every other year and includes visual artists ages 18 and older from the nine counties of the Southern Tier: Allegany, Broome, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Chemung, Steuben, Schuyler, Tioga, and Tompkins, of the over 400 entries in the 2023 biennial, only 51 pieces were selected for survey show.
Founded in 2005 to make a measurable and positive difference for rural artists, the Southern Tier Biennial affords artists an opportunity to take part in the process of a professional art competition and be rewarded for those efforts. This project is produced by the Tri-County Arts Council, the Cattaraugus Region Community Foundation, and made possible by an endowment from the estate of F. Donald Kenney. To learn more, visit www.southerntierbiennial.com.
Each biennial is juried by new jurors and, therefore, the shows they create are different in tone and scope, yet equally true to the definition of "a regional survey of visual art.” The 2023 jurors were Andrea Alvarez, PhD is Associate Curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, where she has worked since she joined as a Curatorial Fellow in 2017, Judy Barie is a Fine Artist and Curator, she splits her time between Pittsburgh PA and Chautauqua NY, where she has served for the past 16 years as the Director of the Chautauqua Visual Arts Galleries in Chautauqua Institution and Tullis Johnson, Curator and Manager of Exhibitions and Collections at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, in Buffalo, New York, has organized more than 40 exhibitions of contemporary and historical art.
Tammy Renée Brackett: I am a scavenger who works with remnants of what is left behind. I employ traditional craft techniques used by my late mother and grandmothers while responding to the male-dominated deer hunting culture that surrounds me in Western New York. I confront traditional ideas of gender and identity via contrasts, contradictions, and idioms. Working with the skin of an animal affords a level of intimacy with both the animal and with death. I will never forget the feeling of holding a deer hide, fresh off the animal, for the first time. The weight of it—feeling the simultaneous presence and absence of the live animal—I was not prepared for it. Now, after skinning countless deer, I am still in awe of the power of a deer hide to speak of life and death, of individual and herd. As a hide becomes leather, the deer’s presence is replaced by a human presence. Many people are unaware that there was a time when the white-tailed deer was threatened by extinction due to the over harvesting of them for their hides. The hides used in these works were salvaged from people who hunt to feed their families and would have otherwise discarded them. Others came from deer who had been struck and killed by vehicles. Some of them I tanned myself. Others were tanned by Indigenous peoples in Canada.
The Tri-County Arts Council advocates for the creation and appreciation of arts and culture in the region. TCAC is always open to the public and adding to their Artisan Market and class schedule at 110 West State St in Olean, NY 14760. We now have new hours from Wednesday to Friday from 10 to 5pm and Saturday from 10 to 4pm.