Brett F Harvey
2011
Born in 1985 in Boston, Massachusetts, I currently work and reside in Naples, Florida with my wife, artist Lauren Amalia Redding. I attended the New Hampshire Institute of Art, notably studying under James Aponovich and Marcus Greene. During that time, I spent five weeks studying at the Florence School of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, which proved transformative. Though I obtained my BFA in Painting, my primary interest became sculpture, especially due to exposure in Italy.
After spending a couple years as an assistant preparator at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire, I attended the New York Academy of Art. There, my concentration was in sculpture and anatomy. I studied under sculptors Harvey Citron, Randy McIver, and Robert Simon. I also painted under Steven Assael and Odd Nerdrum. Though I was dedicated to sculpting at this point, it was Nerdrum who instilled what would become a dominant principle in my own work: "It all goes back to the Greeks."
I lived and worked in Queens, New York for seven years following graduate school. During that time I worked as a fabricator and the lead installation specialist for a major Manhattan-based studio. This afforded me the opportunity to expand and refine my fabrication experience, and also to travel. Simultaneously, I continued to make my own work and exhibit it primarily in New York City and the Northeast.
In 2018, my wife, Lauren Amalia Redding, and I partnered to found H&R Studio, a studio where we make our own work and teach others in Naples, Florida. Both of us strive to merge informed technique with sincere content within our own artwork and impart that balance to others.
Artist Statement
My work is a response to ideas of evolutionary theory, ancient human history, human prehistory, and geology. As we learn more about the evolutionary history of humans and more about the dramatic climatic and geological changes our planet has experienced within the lifespan of our species, I am captivated by the patterns of culture and civilization that human beings repeat over and over. I also use materials emblematic of our contemporary civilization to help question the perspective of our culture: do we really want to look back and down on history, or are we really any different? By sculpting bodies that explore which lessons have been learned, forgotten and rediscovered countless times, I strive to answer those questions—and, in doing so, ultimately explore what makes us human.
The adjacent images are installed outside Method & Concept, Naples, FL.