Turbo, Michelle Bracewell, Mixed Media
Artist Statement
Even as a child, Michelle loved treasure hunting for âold things.â It started with trips to her motherâs family plantation in Baton Rouge, LA. Michelle would spend hours rummaging around the old buildings and defunct sugar mill for treasures. At 15, she landed her first job at Houstonâs famous Flea Market in the concession stand just so she could scour the antique booths for treasures after her shift. Being obsessed with art, Michelle knew she wanted to pursue art as a career. Her father, however, was concerned that she couldnât support herself with her art and encouraged her to pursue a more traditional career path. Disappointed she couldnât attend art school, she pursued a career in business sales, where she excelled but felt unfulfilled.
After years of creating as a hobby she decided to go all in and opened Maddie Blues Studio. She designed and produced a fun enameled jewelry line which she sold wholesale through the major markets. After years of managing staff and wholesale reps, as well as working very long hours, she decided to close her studio and pursue a career in a NEW emerging creative field â web design. She became a certified webmaster and opened Bracewell Web Works, in 2000, which she still operates.
All the while she never quit creating and in 2011, she developed an interest in assemblage. âAfter so many years of collecting unique, antique, and just old, rusty things I needed to find something to do with all of it! Itâs just so much fun figuring out the core piece and then building a story around it.â
Her studio walls are filled with shelves of labeled bins containing carefully sorted items. These objects play a fundamental role in my work and are sometimes combined with collage and painting. Rarely does a weekend go by that she canât be found in a thrift store or estate sale or flea market searching for old objects that have stories to tell. The thrill of the hunt never ends!
For years she created in virtual seclusion, only sharing her work with family and a few close friends. Then, with their encouragement she decided enter her first juried art exhibit, Recycle Santa Fe 2022. She was amazed and thrilled to win first prize, and her assemblage sculptures have continued to delight art lovers since.
âBecause each piece is so unique, Iâm constantly learning new techniques and purchasing new tools, adhesives, and the like. Iâm not a welder so primarily I use cold connections such as adhesives, rivets, nuts & bolts, screws, wire, and the like. But I do solder and sometimes incorporate that in a piece.â
Since 1997 sheâs resided in Colorado Springs with her two rescue dogs, Ozzie and Alfie. Her studio and office are in her walk-out basement, where she designs, produces, and ships her work. In the warmer months, she enjoys working in her beautiful âbee attractiveâ flower garden and vegetable garden. She frequently visits her family in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she loves looking at art and, of course, searching for unique treasures.
Artist Bio
Puzzling together unrelated objects to create a story is an absolute passion of Michelleâs. Rummaging around her vast supply of antiques/vintage treasures begins the story, and somehow each piece seems to tell her what it wants to be, where itâs meant to go. Itâs not enough to bring these pieces together, they are altered and shaped with paint, clay, fabric, tools, solder, whatever makes the piece complete. And while humor is an important component of her work, some pieces are a bit more on the serious side. If her art brings a smile to your face, or makes you step back and think about it a moment, that makes her day.
Michelle Bracewell is a mixed media assemblage artist who lives and works in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She grew up in Houston, Texas, with a talented, artist mother who studied under Caroline Durieux at LSU. Her mother instilled in her a passion for art and creating. From watercolor and pen illustrations to paper clay, beading, painting, jewelry making, and now assemblage sculpture, she has enjoyed her creative journey.
While Michelle has been an artist all of her life and has been focused on mixed media sculpture since 2011, she has only been showing her work publicly since November 2022. In that short time she has won 2 national awards in juried exhibitions and had her work purchased by a museum for permanent display. In the 1990s she owned Maddie Blues Studio and created an enamel line of jewelry that she sold nationwide through the major wholesale markets. She also had an exclusive licensing agreement for one of her designs with R.J. Reynolds.
She has a graphic design background and is a certified webmaster. She has owned and operated Bracewell Web Works since 2000.
