Michele Brody's "Arboreal Ethereal: Capturing the Entropy of Nature" Curatorial Support by Alena Alekseeva

Opening Reception: July 10, 2025, from 5-8pm

Artist Discussion with Jennifer McGregor: July 31, 2025, from 6:30-8 pm

Closing Reception: Aug 16, 2025 from 2-5 pm

The Bronx River Art Center is proud to announce “Arboreal Ethereal: Capturing the Entropy of Nature,” a solo exhibition by Michele Brody, on view this summer as part of the BRAC Artist Studio Program Spotlight Series. Through an immersive installation of paper-based sculptures and community-centered programming, Brody confronts the urgent themes of environmental degradation, memory, and migration in The Bronx and beyond. The exhibition is produced with curatorial support from Fulbright scholar Alena Alekseeva and will be on view from July 10 to August 16, 2025. There will be an Opening Reception on July 10th from 5-8 p.m. with an Artist talk and discussion with independent curator Jennifer McGregor, scheduled for July 31st from 6:30-8 pm.

Michele Brody’s practice merges environmental activism with material poetics. Trained in fibers and material studies, she is known for creating mixed-media installations and public works of art that interweave local flora and community stories to deepen an understanding of the surrounding ecology and history. At its core, her focus is on crafting sustainable site-generated environmental installations that illuminate the subtle beauty of the everyday while grappling with the challenges of globalization, over-development, and more extreme weather events. Her exhibition at BRAC will feature new and recent works from her series Nature in Absentia and relevant past and ongoing projects. 

Nature in Absentia memorializes the disappearance of native ecosystems through two significant bodies of work: “Monarch Migrations” and “Ghosting.” In “Monarch Migrations,” viewers are enveloped in a suspended swarm of origami butterflies made from handmade milkweed paper, the host plant for Monarch habitats. Brody collects the plants from along the Bruckner and Pellham Parkway before being cut back by DOT. Each butterfly bears a handwritten testimony gathered in community workshops — stories of displacement, hope, and return. Set against dynamic footage from the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, the piece draws a poignant parallel between the instinctual flight of the Monarchs and the struggles of human migration across borders.

The second installation, “Ghosting,” features cast-paper sculptures and wall reliefs of once-native NY trees like the Silver Birch and American Chestnut. Rendered in translucent sheets of abaca and kozo, these spectral forms evoke absence as presence — a forest of memory. The delicate paper, made from fast-growing, non-native plants without harsh chemicals, reinforces Brody’s commitment to sustainability while questioning the binary between the invasive and the indigenous. Brody’s use of handmade paper is both conceptual and material. The pulped fibers, regenerated from natural detritus, embody cycles of transformation — from fragility to resilience, from decay to rebirth. "The material takes on any form,” she says, “but can also break down easily and be reconstituted into something new.” The artist sees each cast sheet as a vessel of history and place.

Nature in Absentia emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the temporary slowing of urban life revealed the latent resilience of natural systems. As visitors enter the deep green walls of the gallery, Brody invites us into a temporary ecosystem of her own making — a space haunted by life casts of tree trunks, butchered stumps, and preserved cattails under a canopy of flitting butterflies amongst regenerated flower blossoms and coconut palm leaves. This monochromatic “forest,” crafted from natural paper stained by the elements, evokes the loss of green spaces. In contrast, the lurid colors captured overhead of the Deep Water Horizon oil spill and recent electoral college maps punctuate the installation, representing the vivid by-products of human development.

Throughout the exhibition, Brody will lead participatory workshops in partnership with BRAC’s Education program. Visitors will learn to create handmade paper from locally harvested plants, share poetry and personal histories, and participate in tea ceremonies that root them in the present moment. These sessions underscore the exhibition’s ethos: art as ecological ritual and communal memory-making.

Michele Brody is a native New York environmental artist with over 30 years of creating site-specific installations worldwide. Her work has been supported by NYFA, NYSCA, LMCC, Bronx Council on the Arts, and the Pollock/Krasner Foundation, among others. She has exhibited internationally in France, Germany, Taiwan, Costa Rica, and across the United States. Notable public commissions include permanent artworks for the MTA and Department of Education in the Bronx. Arboreal Ethereal marks the culmination of her three-year residency in the Bronx River Art Center’s Artist Studio Program. The exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the Bronx Council on the Arts.

Join us for the opening reception on July 10th to engage with Brody’s evocative work, which sparks conversation about the delicate interplay of nature and humanity. We invite you to witness this unique ecosystem created through a laborious artistic process. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 3-6 p.m. and Saturdays from 12-5 p.m.

For more information, please get in touch with Jhanique Lovejoy, Exhibition Associate, at (718) 589-5819 ext 10, by email at exhibitions@bronxriverart.org, or directly with the artist at mbrody@bronxriverart.org.