ARTIST Joey Brock

On View Oct 15 – Nov 26th, 2022

Daisha Board Gallery
2111 Sylvan Avenue, Dallas, TX 75208

Joey Brock is a mixed media artist living in Dallas, TX and a proud member of the LGBTQIA community. His contemporary portraiture is influenced by the human condition.  The focus of his portraits is to celebrate diversity, self- love and bring greater visibility to people in the LGBTQIA community, BIPOC and woman.

The title of my current exhibition “we ARE” is the representation of our collective society and conveys the beauty in every individual. It illustrates the space we are all entitled to in the opening line of the constitution, “We the people….”

My work continues to celebrate diversity, self-love and changing people’s perceptions. The portraits are personal, with the creative decisions based on my conversations with each subject filtered through my artistic lens as a highly sensitive, intuitive empath. I asked what has impacted them most in their lives— seeking to understand how people are shaped by their experiences and the skills they learned to cope without focusing on any particular knowledge or trauma. The discussions varied on race, sexual orientation, and being transgender, among other intersectional subjects. I focused on the hope and growth from their learnings, and in doing so, put a voice to the face.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner gap=”35″][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]The portraits resemble quilts with geometric patterns inspired by the tiled walls of the Bishop Arts area of Dallas and, of course, stitching. The stitching detail has been elevated in this work and one can see the DNA from my fashion merchandising background. There is greater attention to detail and precision in the stitching which creates an architecture seen in the finished portrait resembling a Couture garment. The quilting reference is symbolic of our American patchwork of cultures, which delineate the hard-worn scars of our histories and the healing within. Quilting for me is as kinetic as a visual manifestation of this tension. My first memories of quilting began weaving through my childhood thanks to my Grandmother’s and great-aunts’ ritual union with fabrics on our family farm.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”4539″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row gap=”35″ content_placement=”middle”][vc_column width=”2/3″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″ offset=”vc_col-lg-offset-1 vc_col-lg-3″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column]