I am lucky to be an artist.

Close to 25 years ago Carla Bratt attended her first gourd workshop in Berkely, California. Since childhood art had always held an integral role in her life, yet none of her past creative experiences would compare with the love affair she would eventually undertake with gourds. Gourds presented Bratt with an infinite number of shapes and endless numbers of sizes; complex curves, smooth surfaces and  the golden glows of each one challenged her imagination. She realized that working with an organic object had it's own unqiue soul, providing an unlimited number of creative posssibilities and potentials.

Cutting, carving, burning, painting embellishing and weaving-Over the years Bratt has employed countless techniques on her gourds, most self taught and even some self invented, such as  the use of encaustic  wax applications . Using pyroengraving, painting, carving and metal leaf as a center, Bratt couples her creative intellect with processes from collage work, photography and printmaking to guide her artistic journey.

Finding her inspiration in quiet thoughts, random reflections and charming epiphanies, an individual gourd by Bratt might offer the viewer the timelessness of a Navajo rug, a creature of the deep sea or the mysterious iconography of ancient and diverse cultures. Each piece she produces is an attempt to capture a moment in the mind's eye through a splash of color, the smoothness of polished abalone or the flash of a bird's feather. Bratt also finds her inspiration in the trueness of nature's beauty, never forgetting how fragile our earth home is, but also honoring it's strength and resilience.

Along the path of Bratt's creative journey, she discovered the tradtional art of Japanese fish printing or "gyotaku". Working in both traditional and non tradtional ways with her fish prints, she offers delicate, realistic prints and fish print collage work mounted on board and canvas. 

Recently, Bratt purchased an etching press and has set up a second studio, aside from her gourd art studio, to explore the world of printmaking. Her background in gourd design work has successfully transferred over to her print work. Eventually, Bratt's goal is to offer both fine art gourds and art prints, celebrating the exciting space between the heart and soul of human connectedness with nature, as well as with each other.

Now showing in West Coast galleries and retail stores, Bratt's work has also been published in two  Lark Publication books : Beyond The Basics: Gourd Art and Gourd Art: Southwestern Techniques. Her work has  achieved many awards and is found  in collector's homes and businesses, both nationally and internationally.

"It has been such a long and rewarding process, this gourd art trip of mine. Along the way I have discovered myself, acquired life long friends, branched out to new art processes and learned to look at life's never ending connections and reconnections-all the while valuing the journey that continues to delight and surprise me.. Thre is not a moment in my life that holds a whisper of boredom!" Carla Bratt; fine art gourd artist, printmaker and multi media collage creator.

The inspiration for my HumanTreeRobot Series comes from a subject, usually solitary, presented in a lean environment, surrounded by color that enshrouds and highlights. I choose a single subject to convey the idea of focusing on the one in order to better understand the collective. In the instance of a tree, we engage one, before knowing the care, or use, of many. With a human figure (or pair); who we are as individuals helps us to better understand a couple, a group, a society. A series of robots stand silently, touching on the benefits or dangers of technology.  In these representational works, subjects often convey a sense of history or melancholy.   I relate this to paths taken, or the balance of what was and what is to be.   Through my paintings, I strive to achieve a sense of discovery, where at first glance there seems to be a singular subject, but upon further inspection, one can journey deeper into the subtext, exploring a balance between art, artist and viewer.

I collect, select and recreate images in a process of layering drawing and painting. City scenes allow me to examine my own changing perspectives as well as those of American society, by focusing on the elements that bear silent witness to every public moment. These settings are shared spaces imbued by a collective history, layered with memories of lived experiences. Night views emphasize the subtle narratives of human nature within the urban landscape, and make me wonder if I’m documenting the last gasps of a falling empire or the dark before the dawn.

My vehicle for self expression has always been through creating art and practicing interior design. I balance two creative careers equally as a visual artist and as a partner of INSTUDIO interior design. My contemporary aesthetic in art and design is shaped by my passion for art, architecture, craft and designs from global periods, styles and cultures.

 Let me tell you why I'm not an axe murderer.

 I have traveled to every corner of this dark earth and it really is a terrible place:  death, disease, irritable bowel syndrome.

 Then there's the rent, the bills, the unhappy spirits floating everywhere around us.
  I chose to just run away from my problems and paint naked ladies all day. 

My art isn't about trying to heal the violence in my soul, instead it's about the cultivation and nourishment of it--because that is how I genuinely feel, or maybe this is how the universe genuinely feels, through me.  

 Either way, I am putting all of that violence out for your viewing pleasure:
 destruction and chaos, colors and shapes, form and imagination.

Plus philosophy, science, mysticism, our ordinary experience of daily life.

 It's all on the table, and because I have no allegiances to any of those things, I can fuck around all I want.

 Healing is for hippies.  Self-cultivation is for deluded artists.  
 Stop by my studio and share in my delusions.

 Namaste,

 Locust
 SF 2013