Brzezinski Art was created to honor the legacy of Emilie Benes Brzezinski, acclaimed sculptor and Mother of Mika Brzezinski, TV journalist,  political expert, and Founder of Forbes Know Your Value.

Brzezinski Art has a simple mission- to celebrate the transformational art created by Emilie Brzezinski and continue to inspire nature based art for generations to come.

Emilie Brzezinski’s career as a sculptor became highly notable later in her life, in particular. Her exhibitions were frequent, and commissions were constant. This respect in the art world is hard earned, and often elusive to women sculptors. Throughout history women sculptors faced major challenges:

Women sculptors had limited access to art education

Women sculptors were excluded from artistic circles and institutions.

Women sculptors had limited opportunities to exhibit

Women sculptors were subject to gender based stereotypes

Women sculptors were always underrepresented in art history

Emilie Brzezinski is a shining example of talent and passion, rising above the challenges and blazing a trail for women artists and sculptors throughout the world. Emilie’s ability to achieve recognition for her particular artistry was even more amazing, as exhibiting Emilie’s work required logistical fortitude.

Aside from Emilie’s central focus on monumental sculptures of epic proportions and weight, Emilie worked on several much smaller pieces, yet these smaller format bowls took on great significance.

Most were extremely heavy and too large for daily use. They were sculptures where Emilie’s relationship with the wood was supremely evident: her chainsaw, axe, and, in some cases, fire. Each of these methodologies further advanced her ability to create sections and cores of trunks and to transform the lives of her trunks.

In all cases, the bowls showed her understanding of each wood species and her respect for nature while also serving as a metaphor for gathering and celebration.

The bowl vessel became a particular era in Emilie’s sculptural body of work. Her bowl vessels represent:

Life and Death

Beauty and Destruction

Celebration and Memorial

From her chunky, egg-shaped bowls, which possess a fabulous sense of impossibility—mirroring our feelings when we encounter Emilie’s monumental trunks—to the bowls that display the age lines of the trees from every angle, including the bark on one section. Emilie’s tools, chainsaw and chisel alike, spring into action, their cuts competing with the perfect lines that mark each year of the tree’s life.

To her flattened basin bowls that Emilie charred with fire.

Each bowl stands on its own and not perfectly .. how boring it be and so unlike nature to present anything but originality in each curve, chip, chisel, and cut.
Emilie’s crafted angles point in different directions, creating new shapes, shadows, and forms. In short, sculpture.

Throughout Emilie’s career, Emilie had a particular fascination with resin. It was a material that had a major importance in her work.

Emilie had been working with wood in its opaque solidity and wanted to study a material that had a transparent solidity. As she continued to master the material, Emilie carved resin and cast in resin. This image reveals her work in resin casting, using a bark as a mold.

This idea was partially born of Emilie’s interest in preserving a form and giving it a new character, where texture and organic forms can be imprinted and then experienced in a different way.

Emilie’s art career can be characterized by the pursuit of understanding materiality, pushing boundaries of form, and unlocking mysteries.

In this particular resin work seen in this photo, Emilie is carving resin, studying texture, and mastering how materials respond to sculptural manipulation.

As you can see in this photo, Emilie has no fear of using unconventional tools to create forms and textures, even in a relatively unforgiving material such as resin.