Art Meets Fashion - The Mannequin Project
Showcasing the wild imaginations of San Diego Artists

Nigel Brookes

Mannequin Inspiration:
This piece re-imagines the mythic paradise of our ancient past and locates it in our near future. The “fall from paradise” occurred when we learned to “language” the world, forgetting that language comes from us. Humans move through symbols as fish move through water, mediums so pervasive as to be essentially invisible and beyond awareness. To re-member alchemy is to expose the nature of symbolism to our conscious attention and transmute it in the laboratory of our imagination.

Bio:
A native San Diegan, Nigel Brookes has been studying, writing about, creating, and showing art his entire life. Currently, Nigel works for the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture as an Arts Management Specialist, where he serves as a budget and policy analyst and a public art project manager. His previous experience includes work as a grant writer and administrator; a trainer and writer for San Diego Consulting Group; as program manager at the Tariq Khamisa Foundation to reduce youth violence; and as a college instructor at San Diego State University and local community colleges. Nigel earned a Masters Degree in Communication from San Diego State University with a research and teaching emphasis in visual symbolism, philosophy of language, and organizational and cultural theory. As founding member of The Ancient Gallery artist collective, his current artistic interests combine medieval aesthetics with early 20th century surrealism through the use of assemblage sculpture in the service of site-specific black light installations, and as a location for performing myth and ritual.

His artwork can be accessed at http://www.ancientgallery.org/.