billiejunebrand

Gradual Disordering engages and extends the weavings, paintings and sculptures of Billie June Brand. Through the overlaying of memory and materials—cat hair, ash, drawings, twigs, text, branches, cleaning cloths—a past continually intervenes in the present. Much like the physical exhibition, these poems are a re-organization of materials, constructed from old poetry works, short story fragments, and journal entries. 


Repetition, obscuring, and abstracting are central to making sense of the non-objective, non-linear, non-subjective logics of this project’s obsession. Clarice Lispector says, “One of the strongest ways of being is to be negatively”. This collection of art and poems glances behind what one might think of as “positive space”, and instead positions itself in the gaps of living, the accumulation of detritus, and the intimate nests from within which we articulate and enact our habits.


Gradual Disordering was displayed in the Law Warschaw Gallery at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota as apart of the 2026 Studio Art Capstone exhibition, “Habit Pattern”