BIOGRAPHY
Full Bio on Request
Formative years spent in the United States, Spain and Switzerland.
Education
California College of Arts and Crafts - Oakland, CA. / University of Texas - Austin, TX / The Arts Student League - NYC, NY / Provincetown Art Association and Museum - Provincetown, MA / Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill - Truro, MA / Fine Arts Work Center - Provincetown, MA / Broward College - Ft Lauderdale, MA Graduated 2013 with high honor from its Graphic Design Technology Program
Influences
New York School of Abstract Expressionism, Modern and Traditional Japanese Sumi,
Europeans and North and South American Mid Century Modern design
Presently in the Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, MA
Work shown in museums, art galleries, art associations in Provincetown, Ft. Lauderdale and Miami
Full exhibition list available upon request.
PROCESS NOTES
Digital Art Collection is scalable, color customizable, and surface printable for mass production. This collection was designed with the hospitality industry in mind, however, it extends itself to a wide range of purpose including children’s art.
ANALOG ART PROCESS
Quick, receptive and responding to the process.
Gestural
MEDIUMS
Digital
Drawing
Painting
Print Making
Oils, Pastels, Charcoal, Collage
COLLECTION NOTES
PINWHEEL Series Statement: The pieces in this series are collages made from my own paintings on paper that I have mounted on 1.5 x 12 x 12" wood panels. I started this series at the beginning of the Covid-19 troubles in March, 2020. I often rework my paintings until I feel like they are finished. I found that making these pinwheel designs was a satisfying way to complete those unfinished works. It was uncomfortable cutting up paintings but I had to trust in the process. I am happy with these joyful and interesting results.
NOTES ON DIGITAL COLLECTIONS
Paris Collection: "In 2015 while I was traveling in France I started designing my abstract digital postcards on my iPad. This was the inception of a growing number of digital image collections I am working on. I lived in Europe as a teen learning that in such a condensed area with many languages good graphics are very important. I find French graphic design often proves that there is no reason why beauty and humor can't be part of that important process. Oh, yes...and the food! " Lee Brock
Miami Collection: "I have lived in Fort Lauderdale for over ten years. This collection is not only about Miami but all of South Florida — a place where the leaves on the trees are bigger than me, the clouds glow orange and pink, Celia Cruz is a saint, I-95 never sleeps and just over there are the Everglades and over there is the third largest coral barrier reef system in the world and just down there Cuba...lively, bright and hot South Florida." Lee Brock
Jali Collection: "I have named this collection after the architectural element jali that was developed to provide ventilation, light and temperature control in harsh desert climates - often beautifully decorated. Jali are also used to screen off women who must live in "purdah", the practice among certain Muslim and Hindu societies of keeping women sequestered, apart from public spaces in buildings. Jali – secrets, veils...beautiful, perplexing..." Lee Brock
New York Collection: "I lived in NYC for most of the 1980's, worked in hotel and restaurant kitchens, making art at home. The city is indelibly etched in my memory - the angular rhythm of the buildings and the subway...the jazz that was born there - Monk...the art - Pollack...the food - Gray's Papaya...a herd of Yellow Taxis - run!...the rivers, the museums, the Village Voice..." Lee Brock
GRAPHIC DESIGN SERVICE
As an independent designer I provide individualized personal attention to my client's projects.
Over the years I have developed a system that works to bring out the best of my client's ideas.
Logo Design and Branding - Product labeling - Signage - Business Cards - Advertising - Layout Design - Catalogs - Programs - Brochures - Rack Cards - Branding Style Guides for Clients
Digital Advertising - Website Template Customization - Email Campaigns - Photoshop Retouching and Mock-ups
Samples available upon request.
By Susan Rand Brown
Banner Correspondent/Provincetown Banner Aug. 7, 2014
“I like to work real fast,” says painter and graphic designer Lee Brock, in the gallery where she assists owner Patty DeLuca and shows her own art. “This new series,” she continues, standing next to a four-paneled grid, each blue-toned, layered painting highlighting abstractly rendered objects, from a pendulum to beautifully mounted fossil seen through windows in Parisian design boutiques, “is done in waterbased mediums, inks and acrylics. It dries faster than oils so I can work through more spontaneously and still get that painterly effect.” Interning a few summers ago at the Provincetown Art Association & Museum as the capstone of a graphic design degree at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale, Brock also gallery-sat to engage museum visitors in conversation about Robert Motherwell’s abstract paintings — out of love for the art, of course, but also to teach herself how best to describe the kind of expressionist artwork she began doing in her teens...
Traditionally schooled in the U.S. and in Europe, including teen years spent in Madrid when her art-loving family moved from the U.S. to Spain, Brock’s truest education has happened through intuition, circumstance and apprenticeship. An early stop in her journey was the California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland, where beat poets like Michael McClure were teaching classes. Next was an art program in Austin, Texas. Buddies were hanging out at the well-known Café Les Amis, and soon Brock was cooking there, drawing posters for the local music scene, illustrating small edition books and showing her own artwork.
In Austin, she met women with Provincetown ties, and in 1978 spent her first summer in town; at Gabriel’s Guesthouse a year later, she and others opened The Local Artist’s Gallery. “The only criteria was that an artist live within 50 miles of the gallery,” she explains, spontaneously drawing a circle in the air. She also met Sue Harrison, writer, blogger and silversmith, and now her life partner. (Harrison is the former arts and entertainment editor for this newspaper.) When she and Brock met, Harrison owned Half Bay Moon Leather; and soon Brock was learning the art of leather cutting. “Then I followed my dreams to go to New York and become known as an artist,” she says, smiling at the memory of her youthful self, “and instead went to culinary school.” Culinary school for her meant a formal education in French cuisine; before long she was whipping up Escoffier sauces at the four-star Pierre Hotel, making, Brock says, edible art in the kitchen, and her own paintings at home. “I kept trying to go off and find the next exciting thing, and the Pierre kept calling me back.” About 13 years ago Brock again heeded the siren call of Provincetown, and soon was able to return to making art, becoming increasingly visible as a graphic designer with clients including the Provincetown Art Association & Museum and the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival, and as a visual artist with a vibrant palette and identifiable sense of style. Mostly recently she has studied monoprint and silkscreen with master printmaker Vicky Tomayko, experimenting with techniques that increase her fluency in both fine arts and client based design.
Her ode to Provincetown, “Five Lobsters, One Claw,” hanging in the upper level of the DeLuca Gallery when this reporter visited, is essential Brock: a study in reds, blues and yellows with swirls of black ink, its dancelike brush-strokes and bright colors expressing a sense of gratitude for life’s spontaneous twists and turns.
By Frank Polanco
for Living in Oakland Park
May 31, 2022
Designer and artist Gloria Sollecito interviewed me for her blog on her ARTFUL KITCHENS company website: