Elissa Brown Featured Artist Cottonwood Art Festival Spring 2025 in Richardson Texas
Elissa Brown artwork titled Rain Barrel as featured piece for Cottonwood Art Festival in Richardson
Elissa Brown is the Spring 2025 Featured Artist for Cottonwood Art Festival in Richardson Texas
Woodcut illustrator, Elissa Brown, finds beauty in freckles and imperfections; and narrates stories in nostalgic vignettes about family and community.
RICHARDSON, TX, UNITED STATES, February 25, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ — Cottonwood Art Festival has selected Elissa Brown as the Spring featured artist for May 3-4 at Cottonwood Park in Richardson. Brown was born and raised in Texas and has since taught many grades ranging from kindergarten to college over the years. With a nurturing love of art, Brown earned a BFA in Design at Abilene Christian University and an MFA at Syracuse University in New York. Brown has lived all over the US and Canada, and currently has a home and studio located outside of Kansas City, Missouri.
“My business and collection of works are called The Freckled Army after my grandmother from whom I got my red hair and freckles. Before her passing, she had journaled about how she used to be bullied for her eccentricities, so I create my pieces with all their "flaws" and "freckles" as a defense mechanism for her younger self and as a reminder to seek out beauty in our imperfections,” Brown said.
While Brown started with photography, mixing and manipulating chemicals in the darkroom, her work as an illustrator emerged through layers of experimentation. From the simple recognition of varying textures in layered paper, to dimensional woodcut environments and characters, the stories that Brown illustrates continue to pursue both fantastic and what Brown calls “absurd narratives.” The work style and story content are rooted in Brown’s love of books and background in set design for the theater.
“The immersion that the physical depth of the layers provides also elicits the sublimation of play within each story to further our collective memories of nostalgia and community. My ever-thirsty creative cup is constantly running over with ideas that find peace, beauty and poetry in the mundanity of everyday life. To constantly ask questions of experience, family, peers, and strangers, leaves nothing but open-ended stories that beg to be narrated, if only in the short vignettes my work exhibits. Nurturing my curiosity for this world and our shared experiences helps ensure my creative tank is constantly both full, and hungry.”
The Freckled Army collection varies in size with the biggest original pieces being over seven feet wide, while the smaller six-inch squares have become a crowd favorite for collectors. The bigger works allow Brown to elaborate expression and experimentation. The smaller pieces provide an accessible entry for new and younger buyers to start a collection of their own or easily giftable for specific memories and hobbies of interest.
“I first participated in Cottonwood back in 2015 and to now venture “home” and be able to feature my work for those who have come to feel like family is such a treat. My work strives to bring the same comfort and cozy familiarity to its collectors that Cottonwood has brought to me all these years. Cottonwood Art Festival in Richardson, Texas is like visiting an old friend whose stories you’ve shared, while also anticipating all the new adventures to be had.”
Official Cottonwood Art Festival merchandise with Brown’s illustrated artwork will be available to purchase at the festival or online, and includes the 2025 poster, T-shirts, hats, stickers and other souvenirs.
Cottonwood Art Festival is May 3-4, 2025, at Cottonwood Park, located at 1321 W. Belt Line Rd. in Richardson, Texas. Admission is free and the festival is open Saturday, May 3 from 10 a.m.-7 p.m., and Sunday, May 4 from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. The festival additionally includes live entertainment on the Imagery Courtyard Stage and Acoustic Stage, a craft beer garden, food trucks, ArtStop stations with hand on activities for kids of all ages and more than 200 artist booths with artwork from around the world.
About Cottonwood Art Festival
Cottonwood Art Festival is celebrating its 56th year and is juried show ranked among the top fine art shows in the country. Local artists staged the first festival at the scenic Cottonwood Park in Richardson, Texas in its humble beginnings in 1969. Cottonwood has since established itself as an internationally award-winning signature art event and become a tradition within the community. The festival designed outreach programs as innovative tools to mentor students, designed to broaden the interest in visual arts beyond the art festival, and bring the art world into classrooms. www.cottonwoodartfestival.com
Dianna Lawrence
City of Richardson
+1 972-744-4583
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