Reprinted from Jasper Magazine Fall 2021
by Cindi Boiter
Over the past decade, Jasper Magazine has written about Columbia-based multi-media artist Michaela Pilar Brown many times. This passage of time has witnessed Brown become a leader in our community, not only as a result of her myriad accomplishments but also by the now-international stature she commands across the most-sophisticated fine arts circles.
Brown’s career has been punctuated by a steady continuum of shows, awards, residencies, and related experiences that have helped shape the 50-something artist into the fierce icon she is becoming. Taking home the 2018 Artfields Grand Prize for her mixed-media installation She’s Almost Ready is upmost among her accolades, as is being awarded the inaugural Volcanic Residency at the Whakatano Museum in New Zealand that same year.
Born in Bangor, Maine, and raised in Denver, Brown became an influential member of the Columbia arts scene soon after she moved here in 2013. Having spent many a childhood summer visiting the Fairfield County farm where her father lived, Brown had returned to SC a dozen or so years earlier to help care for her aging family patriarch. His land and its legacies were a part of who Brown was even when the she first left home to study at Howard University in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
“Howard felt like family. My professors let me continue my work even when I couldn’t afford tuition,” Brown says. “I spent a lot of time learning outside of academia.”
Critically influenced by such trailblazing American artists as Frank Smith and Jeff Donaldson, Brown identifies world-renowned sculptor Richard Hunt as impacting her work ethic the most.
Hunt, who may be the most highly accomplished contemporary Black American sculptor and creator of public art in the country, visited Howard to install a piece of his work during Brown’s time as a student. When a piece of his art was damaged, Brown was recruited to help with the repair. A burgeoning artist-protégé relationship led to an invitation to study with Hunt for a summer in Chicago.
“I was green and just so honored,” Brown says. “He worked fervently all the time and I worked all the time,” noting that she initially wanted to make public art herself. In fact, the young artist had interned at the International Sculpture Center, part of the Washington Project for the Arts, as well as the Smithsonian Institution.
The emphasis on family and the support systems it can naturally provide had followed Brown to Howard, where the faculty became supportive elders for the young artist. The intimacy and sacredness of her ancestral home not only informed Brown as an artist but also provided her with a profound understanding of the strengths and challenges of southern Black art writ large, as well as with the workings of the local arts community specifically.
After her father died in 2007, Brown’s mother soon also came to depend on her and her brothers for what ultimately would be end-of-life care. It was a crushing loss that further strengthened Brown’s resolve to take command of her platform like never before. The artist continued to bring the roots and wings she had embraced — on her home turf, in DC, and in Chicago — into an enduring relationship with Columbia-based theatre artist Darion McCloud and his daughter more than ten years ago.
“All these experiences changed the shape of the work I was doing and what I wanted to do,” Brown says. “My work became much more personal and honest. My focus came to include what it means to me to be Black in SC, but it also focuses a great deal on love and how we grieve.”
Among her major accomplishments over the last decade has been taking on the position of executive director of 701 CCA – Columbia’s Center for Contemporary Art. 701 CCA is located on the second floor of the historic 701 Whaley Street complex and featured on page XX of this magazine.
Arguably the perfect person for this position due to her local and international profile, Brown is the first Black woman to have this role, and she handles the responsibility with a resolute intensity. “701 [CCA] has historically been a place of inclusion,” Brown says. “I am engaged in protecting that and expanding it through exhibitions, programming, community dialogue, and programs outside our walls that engage the community directly in neighborhoods and through community partnerships. … We had a challenging moment recently, and I'm proud of who we are on the other side of it. I'm proud of the public statement we made and the manner in which we supported our artist.”
Brown is referencing the night of May 17, 2021. John Sims, an artist-in-residence at the gallery was living in an apartment assigned to him in the building at 701 Whaley Street when he was accosted, handcuffed, and held at gunpoint as a “suspicious person” by the Columbia Police Department. Brown released a statement in response to the attack, saying the incident was not the first time a resident at 701 had encountered the police. “It was the first time, however, such an encounter led to hostile confrontation, detention, cuffing, and a records check. On the contrary, such previous encounters have resulted in courteous apologies from officers. The difference? Race. Mr. Sims is a Black man; the other incidents involved a white man.”
“Like other community-based, nonprofit institutions,” Brown continues in her statement, “CCA has the responsibility to shine light on injustice it encounters and to be part of an active dialogue to make real and discernible change. We cannot ignore the relationship between white supremacy that permeates our culture and the racial profiling we believe infected John Sims’ treatment by CPD officers. … What we can and will do is support the efforts of John Sims as the CCA artist in residence to tell his story, to provide context for that story through his artistic expression, and to seize the opportunity to join with him and the greater Columbia community as we continue the struggle for racial justice.”
It is Brown’s intimate knowledge of the patrons of 701 CCA and the community it supports that informs this position so well. “I am optimistic about the Columbia art scene,” she says. “This is a community that wants change, that's ready to face the challenges of the moment with art leading the discussions. I am hopeful that our politicians recognize the value of art for the betterment of this community, for the comfort it brings, for the space it makes for challenging conversations, and for the expansive learning opportunities it offers young people. I also hope they support it with dollars, and not just the legacy institutions, but in an expansive, inclusive way.”