EMILIE BRZEZINSKI

Working with ax and chainsaw, Emilie Benes Brzezinski creates large-scale wood sculptures that preserve the natural shapes of her material and amplify their essential character. With an artistic career that goes back to the early ‘70s, a period in which she experimented with a variety of media, including plastic, latex, and wood fiber, she is best known for her rough-hewn sculptures made from expressively carved tree trunks.

Despite the fact that Brzezinski has had no formal training, her artwork has brought the artist much recognition of her own. In 2016, two Brzezinski installations, Broken Blocks II and Broken Blacks III, were a place in the permanent collection of the National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic. She has also had solo exhibitions at The Phillips Collection and The Kreeger Museum. A career-spanning monograph titled The Lure of the Forest: Sculpture 1979-2013 was published in the spring of 2014 and is available in bookstores and art museums nationwide.

Married to the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Carter, the artist spent the late 1970s juggling her art career with the raising of three young children and her husband’s schedule. Today, her two sons are active in law and diplomacy, and her daughter, Mika Brzezinski, is a co-host on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.