MARK BROYARD
Born: 1957 - New Orleans, Louisiana
Mark Broyard is descended from a long line of artisans and craftsmen who have plied their trade in New Orleans and Los Angeles. His mother's father was a furniture maker in the Vieux Carree. His own father was a third generation bricklayer as well as a building contractor. Mark sites these influences as being the strongest on his work.
Mark came to the artistic process literally by accident. At the age of eighteen he was involved in a near fatal auto collision and was not expected to walk again. His desire to create art grew out of a cathartic need to turn this debilitating negative into a positive. Behind the garage of the family home was a workshoop where he first began attaching refuse hardware and found objects onto scrap lumber. This therapeutic discovery of the redemptive power of art is a central theme in many of his assemblage sculptures. Images of cultural survival and the durability of the human spirit permeate his work as well as the magical and mysterious nature of religious devotion and spirtuality.
Through artist John Outterbridge Mark met the internatinally known and revered assemblage artist Betye Saar and worked for several years as her studio assistant. Her work and especially her confidence in his ability to help realize her artistic vision is a constant source of inspiration for him. He has worked for sculptor Alison Saar as well.
From 1995 to 2001 Mark was a employed as an educator and art project director for the International House of Blues Foundation's Blues Schoolhouse Program in Los Angeles. Daily contact with folk and outsider artists from the House of Blues' extensive collection had a profound impact on his work. He discovered that like other self-taught artist desire is just as important as formal training in the process of creation. He recieved a degree in Art History from California State University, Northridge.
Mark Broyard has exhibited in Los Angeles, Watts, New Orleans, Oakland, Las Vegas, at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art in Brooklyn, Hampton University Museum and other galleries and museums around the country. His work has been featured in the International Review of African-American Art.
Mark's work is in the collections of August Wilson, Dr. Stella Jones, the Las Vegas Pulbic Library, Xavier University of New Orleans and other private and public collections.
Mark is married to artist Alicia Galindo and is the father of a daughter and two sons both pursuing careers in the visual arts at California College of the Arts in Oakland, California. Mark and Alicia make their home in Culver City, California.
Born: 1957 - New Orleans, Louisiana
Mark Broyard is descended from a long line of artisans and craftsmen who have plied their trade in New Orleans and Los Angeles. His mother's father was a furniture maker in the Vieux Carree. His own father was a third generation bricklayer as well as a building contractor. Mark sites these influences as being the strongest on his work.
Mark came to the artistic process literally by accident. At the age of eighteen he was involved in a near fatal auto collision and was not expected to walk again. His desire to create art grew out of a cathartic need to turn this debilitating negative into a positive. Behind the garage of the family home was a workshoop where he first began attaching refuse hardware and found objects onto scrap lumber. This therapeutic discovery of the redemptive power of art is a central theme in many of his assemblage sculptures. Images of cultural survival and the durability of the human spirit permeate his work as well as the magical and mysterious nature of religious devotion and spirtuality.
Through artist John Outterbridge Mark met the internatinally known and revered assemblage artist Betye Saar and worked for several years as her studio assistant. Her work and especially her confidence in his ability to help realize her artistic vision is a constant source of inspiration for him. He has worked for sculptor Alison Saar as well.
From 1995 to 2001 Mark was a employed as an educator and art project director for the International House of Blues Foundation's Blues Schoolhouse Program in Los Angeles. Daily contact with folk and outsider artists from the House of Blues' extensive collection had a profound impact on his work. He discovered that like other self-taught artist desire is just as important as formal training in the process of creation. He recieved a degree in Art History from California State University, Northridge.
Mark Broyard has exhibited in Los Angeles, Watts, New Orleans, Oakland, Las Vegas, at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art in Brooklyn, Hampton University Museum and other galleries and museums around the country. His work has been featured in the International Review of African-American Art.
Mark's work is in the collections of August Wilson, Dr. Stella Jones, the Las Vegas Pulbic Library, Xavier University of New Orleans and other private and public collections.
Mark is married to artist Alicia Galindo and is the father of a daughter and two sons both pursuing careers in the visual arts at California College of the Arts in Oakland, California. Mark and Alicia make their home in Culver City, California.