FSU’s Department of Visual Arts Presents “Expecting a Different Result,” an Exhibition by Leda Brittenham

Frostburg State University’s Department of Visual Arts will host an exhibit by artist Leda Brittenham, “Expecting a Different Result,” which will open with a reception on Friday, Oct. 6, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Stephanie Ann Roper Gallery in FSU’s Fine Arts Building. This exhibition, which is free and open to the public, will be on display through Friday, Oct. 27.

Brittenham grew up in Spafford, N.Y. She has shown her work in group shows in upstate New York, France, New York City and Indiana. She is currently the managing director at Kunstraum LLC in Brooklyn. She works in painting, installation, fiber and animation in her studio in Ridgewood, Queens.

In her work, Brittenham creates sets, props and backdrops and combines them with real people and objects. She is interested in the translation and retranslation of symbols and signifiers through different media. The objects, paintings, people and spaces in her home are considered, reconsidered, recontextualized, rendered in paint, rendered in yarn and rendered in paint again. Through this practice, she teases out their histories and their secrets.

For this exhibition, she created a life-size painted and knit version of the living room of the apartment where she lived from December 2019 to June 2022, the site of many significant events for her. It was where she sheltered in place during the majority of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a place of transitions and traumas, of creativity and boredom, of safety and confinement.

Brittenham sees it as a period room, like the ones featured in historical homes. Viewers are invited into the space so they can consider the objects we lived among, how they were arranged and what they say about our state of mind. In period rooms, nothing is placed haphazardly, each object becomes a device that teaches a lesson about the way people lived. She is preserving this space as a pseudo-historical object. Brittenham is interested in what the space, paintings and furniture say about our individuality and what they say about our uniformity, and how that shifts and changes over time.

You can view more of Brittenham’s work at https://ledabrittenham.com.

For this show, the Roper Gallery is open Mondays through Fridays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For more information, contact April Wright, professor of sculpture and gallery director, at 301-687-4351 or www.apriljwright.org.