Place and view Brickhouse in 360 degrees on any flat surface using your Phone.
Interact with Brickhouse at actual scale in Virtual Reality on your Meta Quest. Experience includes image gallery audio tour guide.
Get up close with Brickhouse at actual scale in Virtual Reality gallery space.
Simone Leigh
Brickhouse, 2019 by Simone Leigh is located on the Univeristy of Pennsylvania's campus. Brickhouse is an impressive 16 feet in height. The sculpture is cast bronze.
Brickhouse was created in Leigh's Brooklyn studio modeled from two tons of clay from the same quarry Auguste Rodin is said to have aquired his clay. The massive clay sculputre posed a challenge to cast, the process involved making many plaster casts which were used to create positive wax molds, these molds were dipped in a ceramic slurry to create the bronze casting molds. Brickhouse was cast with about 6000 pounds of bronze. The individual bronze casts were then welded together and refined to finish the sculpture. The original installation of Brickhouse was for the High Line in New York City, a copy was purchased and donated to the Univeristy of Pennsylvania. The UPenn sculpture sits at the gateway of College Green. The 3d model created for this site's augment reality or virtual reality experiences were created using photogrammetry, a method of modeling a 3D object from photos. The model was created from over 150 images of the UPenn sculpture.
The 16 foot tall Brickhouse is a combination of architecture and the black female form, the skirt acting as walls of a structure. The sculpture references numerous western african architectural styles including Batammaliba architecture from Benin and Togo and teleuk dwellings of Cameroon and Chad. Brickhouse also draws inspiration from Mammy's Cupboard, a roadside restaurant in Mississippi designed to look like the sterotype of Mammy. The architectural influences in the sculptural form of Brickhouse are quite evident, and the architectual aspect of this peice adds to its overall strength in concept and presence. The sculpture has no eyes, a choice by the artist to avoid any direct identity. Her round afro hair is balanced by two symetrical braids that each end with a cowrie shell, a common iconographic feature of Leigh's work. The braids are also inspired by Thelma from the 1970s television show Good Times.
Many of Leigh's sculptues incorporate references to Africa such as the use of fiber "often combining premodern techniques and materials—including lost-wax casting, salt-fired ceramics, and terracotta—with potent cultural iconographies such as cowrie shells."(Guggenheim) Her work has been featured in major museums and exhibitions including a solo show at the Guggenheim. Leigh was selected to represent the U.S. at the 2022 Venice Biennale, the first Black woman to receive this honor.