Drawing in Space

Broen Gilleran's sculpture that bears two titles, "Steel Drawing" and "Light in the Forest," is an homage to artist Brice Marden, whose large-scale paintings have a similar calligraphic spirit.

It's hard to imagine steel more pliable than it is in the hands of sculptor Broen Gilleran, M.F.A. '02. Viewed from this angle, the work featured in the university's most recent M.F.A.Thesis Exhibition does have the appearance of a steel drawing. Yet, the viewer is invited to engage with the work, to walk through it, wrapped within its tendrils of steel. She describes her approach to sculpture as "organic abstraction."

Gilleran, who earned her undergraduate degree in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art, has been a nurse for 25 years, most recently a psychiatric nurse at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore. Although she claims to make no money from her art, she has been rewarded in other ways. Most recently, Sculpture magazine selected Gilleran as the most outstanding graduate student in the country and, as such, she gets a solo exhibition this fall at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, N.J. --DB