Dan Brown Hozjan | Field Guide
Dan Brown Hozjan
Field Guide
FOCUS GALLERY, APRIL 11 - MAY 6, 2023
Field Guide
/fēld ɡīd/
Vade Mecum (Latin: go with me)
A field guide is a book designed to help the reader identify wildlife or other objects of natural occurrence.
It is generally designed to be brought into the “field” or local area where its subject matter exists. The guide’s purpose is to assist the reader in identification and understanding of different species and aspects of the natural world.
In my art practice, I employ field guides as reference material for crafting my drawings and illustrations. My personal library of roughly one hundred books includes about twenty to thirty guidebooks. These field guides allow me to more accurately represent the subject matter that I am interested in; additionally, they also facilitate my ability to imagine fantastical connections that could exist between different organisms and their environments. As I flip through different guidebooks, from one featuring birds’ nests to one focused on rocks and minerals to one about wildflowers, I can imagine flora and fauna merging together, changing across the planes of deep time and wide spaces of the landscape. But even as these books help me move into the realm of the surreal, they also allow me to stay connected the accurate and specific, with their basis in scientific study and careful observation.
This exhibition also includes observational drawings from the “field” itself, and from natural history museums, which I like to think of as the institutional equivalents of field guides.
DAN BROWN HOZJAN
I was born in the town of Okotoks in southern Alberta. Time spent outdoors growing up helped shape my interest in the natural world and have informed much of my art practice. After completing high school I moved to Dawson City to attend the Yukon School of Visual Arts foundation year program and, during my year spent in Dawson, I developed a strong connection with the local landscape. Over the next three years I finished my bachelor's degree at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, BC, and at the Estonian Academy of Art in Tallinn, Estonia. In both Vancouver and Tallinn I found myself creating artwork inspired by the flora and fauna of the Yukon- I was drawn to return to the Yukon and, after graduating, moved back to Dawson City. I humbly acknowledge that I am a settler on the traditional and contemporary lands of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in people.
Past Exhibitions
