Press

Raleigh News and Observer

 - CORRESPONDENT
All her life, Tracey Broome has created things. Growing up in Myrtle Beach, she helped her father build and reupholster furniture, then went on to have a decade-long career designing furniture showrooms in High Point and across the country.
When the furniture business moved overseas, Broome, 51, started working in theater set and prop design, first in Charlotte and later for several local theaters, including Manbites Dog in Durham and the ArtsCenter Stage in Carrboro. She's made everything from fake pies and frogs to dolls that had to burn during performances.
"Whatever it is, if someone asks, 'Can you make this?' I say sure, and then I go figure out how to do it," said Broome, who lives in Chatham County, near Carrboro.
So it's not surprising that Broome has acquired another skill - pottery. She'd long admired the craft introduced to her by her grandmother, but she wasn't inspired to try it until she saw a wheel-throwing demonstration at the State Fair 13 years ago.
"I'm going to do that," she told her daughter, Wesley, then 5. Her daughter's response: "You go for it, Mommy."
Broom began to study and work with clay in the late 1990s, but didn't sell anything for nearly a decade.
"I threw away just about everything I made for years. I think it's like that '10,000-Hour Rule' - you've got to put the time in."
After moving from Charlotte to the Triangle in 2005, Broome began to work and teach at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro and at Claymakers in Durham. In 2007, she started participating in small craft fairs, selling small decorative items, ornaments and pendants.
Finding her theme
Last year, Broome's art took a new turn, which has brought her more opportunities and attention.
"I saw a call for artists at the Visual Art Exchange in Raleigh for an exhibit called N.C. Landscape, and that started it all," she said.
Broome was familiar with the show's theme. As a child, her family would often drive the rural roads between Myrtle Beach and High Point, and she'd stay with her grandparents there every summer.
While pondering ideas for the show, the image of barns came to her.
"My grandfather loved to ride around for hours in the country. None of the other grandchildren would put up with it, but I loved looking out the windows at the barns and fences and pastures, and all those colors, especially the really rusty stuff. I guess it imprinted on my brain."
After much trial and error, Broome constructed a barn she deemed worthy of submitting, created by rolling out thick slabs of clay for the walls and roof, beveling the edges, and connecting them with a thin, wet clay called a slip. She gave it a door and a window and several coats of terra sigillata, a finish that reveals the clay's texture, much the way barn wood shows signs of weather and aging.
"I looked at it and I thought, this is it, this is what I want to do. It spoke to me about who I was going to be as an artist."
Not only was she accepted into the Raleigh show, but later Broome won a spot in a craft competition at the Bascom center in Highlands that was juried by Carol Sauvion, producer of the PBS series "Craft in America".
"I was very proud to be in that show," Broome said. "I felt so much validation as an artist."
She also thought, "I need to step it up."
Always evolving
But before Broome could make more barns, she needed a dedicated space. She saved every penny from pottery sales in 2010, and this spring had a small studio built behind the home she shares with her husband, Gerry, a photojournalist. The space is a stop on the Chatham Studio Tour this weekend and next.
One of Broome's early supporters was Sara Latta Gress, owner of the N.C. Craft Gallery in Carrboro.
"I'd carried Tracey's raku for a while, and when I saw the barns I thought they said so much about North Carolina, and were a lot different than anything else I'd seen," Gress said. "One thing I love about her is she's always evolving."
Indeed, Broome's ideas for the barns already are expanding and maturing.
"They're now more like the canvas," she said.
Some newer ones are adorned with patterns and found objects, others are tall and slim, and some display text, including one with song lyrics written by daughter Wesley, now a freshman at the UNC School of the Arts.
"In a way, they tell my story, but they really speak to other people, too. I like to let people come up with their own meanings."

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/12/03/1683605/potter-shapes-new-forms-from-old.html#ixzz1ffzCt25q





storytellers_news


Lark & Key Gallery and Boutique 

Storytellers 

June 1st through July 28th

Works by Elizabeth Foster, Tracey Broome and Vicki Sawyer

Join us Friday, June 1st from 6-9 and meet the artists!
*elizabeth and tracey will be here and we are hoping to skype vicki in!


Born into a family of painters, musicians and creative thinkers, Elizabeth Foster was never bored as a child.  Always encouraged to "make things", it was only natural that she would find her own creative path - eventually becoming a singer/songwriter and painter herself.  Elizabeth's love of music influences her artwork.  She currently lives in Nashville, TN where Americana, Folk, Bluegrass, Jazz and Old Time players and performers surround her.  She is drawn to familiarity of the pattern within, the feeling of nostalgia and the underlying current of release. Her creative process incorporates these elements, allowing her to tell stories, often with a bit of whimsy, on canvas.


Franklin, TN based Vicki Sawyer spent her childhood amazed at the charming personalities of birds and the knowledge her father had about them.  She eventually came to the conclusion that if birds could make nests then they could make hats.  This inspired her bird paintings in which each bird wears a 'hat' of natural materials, with the series also expanding to include other animals and concepts, such as masks and encounters with toys.  Vicki's detailed paintings draw you in and bring a sense of peace, vibrancy, joy and humor.

Tracey Broome uses clay to convey her view of the world - fragments of thoughts, feelings and memories of her life. Working out of her Chapel Hill, NC studio, she makes sculptural houses and barns that are inspired by discarded objects, antiques, old cemeteries, run down barns and dilapidated houses.  Her pieces often become sacred spaces for discarded treasures of our past, treasures that range from vintage doll parts to architectural objects.  With simple forms and serene colors Tracey offers a moment of contemplation for the viewer, hoping they find a connection to their own experiences and memories.


Artistic Women by Amanda Scherle

Click here for Amanda's bio


Life's an Adventure: An Interview with Tracey Broome


Agreeing to meet outside Foster's in Durham on a typical late afternoon in late February would be slightly crazy. As it was, last Thursday was anything but typical, from the 80 degree heat to my entourage of 5 kids (my 4 plus a tagalong baby nephew) to the youthful woman with a long brown braid reading outside the Market. Wearing a light mauve blouse, multicolored hand-dyed scarf, and embellished jeans, Tracey Broome certainly embodied the image of a successful artist and intellectual, and, as I spoke with her, I found her to beanything but typical.

Once she recovered from the surprise that I was there to interview her, and wasn't just another crazed mom of many descending upon the Market with ravenous locusts, her face lit up with recognition and we began to talk as if we'd known each other for years rather than seconds. Within minutes, she was holding my 9-month-old nephew, her eyes tracking my boys with a nostalgic gleam as they slurped all-natural root beers and squabbled on and under and at the picnic tables. She spoke fondly of her days teaching young children at the Arts Center in Carrboro, and of her own daughter, Wesley, now grown and attending film school in NC. She told me the story of her jeans and her beautiful scarf, both purchased from another artist after selling her own work for the first time.

Before moving to Chapel Hill, Broome was a set designer in Charlotte. She worked in the theater at night and took pottery classes during the day. Once she moved with her daughter and her husband, Gerry, she became a studio assistant at the Arts Center in Carrboro in exchange for time in the studio. Eventually, she started teaching children's classes, expanding to include homeschooling classes to fill more of the daytime hours in the studio.

As she tells me this, she's lightly bouncing my nephew and smiling as my youngest tries to convince me to try the strange concoction he's managed to put in his nearly empty root beer bottle (where do kids find this stuff?).

"I loved teaching kids, but I had to stop because they brought in so many germs and I kept getting sick. I had three respiratory infections in a row. I hated it, but I needed to be well."



So, Broome moved on. It was a fortuitous change as she built her backyard studio, and started creating her clay houses in earnest (They're not bird houses, by the way. In case, like me, you're prone to misspeaking and risk insulting your subject).  She submitted two of her houses to a local art show, sold them both, and submitted two more to another show. Both of those sold, and now, she's a rising local star. One well off couple in Chapel Hill is so certain that she's going all the way to the top that they've started collecting her pieces now, while she's accessible.

"What made you submit those first pieces?" I ask, taking my restless nephew while my 3.5 year old climbs up the back of the iron chair and over the top of my head.

Her eyes widen as she considers the question. "Wow, good question. I don't know." She pauses for a long while, searching back to when she was less confident and more surprised by the idea of being a real artist. "I guess...It must have been a do or die moment. If I was going to be a real artist, and really do this, I had to go all the way."



Broome is poised to go all the way. Her voice still carries a note of surprise that people are interested in her work, which is still evolving, becoming something personal and more family oriented as she incorporates antiques and personal belongings into custom pieces. This new phase started with the gift of a small porcelain doll from a friend. Broome worked it into a piece, and gave it back to the owner.

"This was a treasure that had been stored away in a drawer, and now it's part of something bigger and she has it out on display and loves to look at it. I love that part of it. Turning something special into something new. Now people give me doorknobs and figurines and pictures."



Broome's work is special and new, and she's a bit protective of it. "I'm starting to see elements of my work in others' work, and I don't like it.  You have to find your own voice. I've found mine."

As we wrap up the interview over the plaintive whining of my brood, she speaks warmly of her impending weekend trip to the beach with artistic friends (not surprising) and excitedly of her newfound vice, Skyrim (quite surprising). My 11 and 8 year olds are deeply impressed that this grown woman is encouraging them to try it out when they get a chance, and look at her with awe as she describes hunting dragons and having great adventures.

Yes, Tracey Broome is anything but typical, and she's in the midst of a grand adventure.Check out her work before the rest of the world figures this out, too.