Artist A. Laura Brody’s “BANNED BOOKS AND BANNED PEOPLE,” the purposely-capitalized sculpture collection of life-sized characters from banned books, is Cerritos College’s final window dressing display of the spring semester.
With a strong background in costume design having worked in film, television, opera, dance, and cosplay, Brody’s skills are evident in all her pieces. Her work has been showcased at many places across the U.S., including Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Massachusetts, Brea Gallery, Westbeth Center for the Arts in New York and now Cerritos College.
Her new collection resonates with one that she designed in 2017 for an event celebrating the seventh season of the popular HBO TV show, Games of Thrones, which is now on display at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
As an artist, she doesn’t just see her costume designs and artwork as beautiful visuals that stop at the surface, but as a form of language to share a message.
“I am a huge lover of books…have been all of my life. And any time you’re trying to restrict information and restrict ideas, we have a problem.”
She hopes that her exhibit will renew conversation about banned books and talk about why these voices are being silenced and get people to read them. Her art pieces are based on books published from the 1950s to more recent, showing that the practice of banning books and shutting down voices is a prolonged issue.
A common element seen throughout all her pieces is the use of book pages from discarded Harry Potter books. While her local bookstore saw piles of unwanted J.K. Rowling novels, Brody saw materials that would become the foundation for her new project.
“The Harry Potter books have been banned before. But also, J.K. Rowling has come out and decided to do her entire new series of the Harry Potter franchise and try to do more anti-trans legislation in England and actively harm a lot of people.”
Her decision to use Harry Potter books as materials didn’t just stem from availability and relevance to the banned book theme, but also represents her stand against the author’s views on transgender individuals.
In terms of her creative process, Brody focuses on creating clothing and accessories that capture the essence of the characters and applies different techniques to each one.
“There’s a woven variety that I did for Fahrenheit 451, which are strips that are woven in and out of each other and then sewn down to a backing and interfacing,” she said. Her idea was to create a flat, puppet-like cardboard cutout that became the stylized version of the original.
Brody experimented with a range of methods for her other pieces, sewing shredded pieces flared on top of one another for Alex from “A Clockwork Orange” and using a herringbone pattern on Elphaba’s piece from “Wicked” to give it a textured and crinkly look.
Brody shares that Cerritos College is the exhibit’s first location to be showcased, but she hopes to share her work and message at many more locations after.
“I know that the city of West Hollywood is going to want one for the front of their library. So I’d like to send these to other libraries, university libraries and municipal libraries, because I really think this is a great way to capture people’s attention.”
A. Laura Brody’s installation will be on display at the Fine Arts building at Cerritos College until April 18.
