Broches responds to landscape as scenery, but is also concerned with how we occupy and treat the world. She writes, “We ‘landscape’ and beautify our surroundings, preserve and protect our national parks. We value a sense of place, collective and individual memory and identity in relation to the land. And we intervene and mold it, exploit and attempt to control and harness it, defy it, trash and neglect it.”
The images in the exhibit are both amusing and puzzling. Some imply social and political consequences. But Broches said the motivation for her work does not come from the desire to be an activist. Rather, she said, she takes photographs and makes art to make sense of her world and to give form to that sense.
A fine arts photographer, Broches lives in Wakefield, where she maintains a studio and is a member of Hera Gallery. In addition to several solo and group shows, she has shown nationally, including a solo show at The Print Center, Philadelphia, Pa., in 2001. In 2008, she exhibited her work at the Gail Cahalan Gallery in Providence. Recent group exhibitions include shows in numerous galleries throughout the U.S., and the traveling exhibition, Beijing and Beyond, Women Artists Respond to the World Conference on Women.
She has curated several exhibitions. In 1995 she represented Hera Gallery on a panel sponsored by the Women’s Caucus for Art at the NGO Forum on Women of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China.
Broches has an MFA in visual art from Vermont College, an MA in art history from Hunter College and a BA from Bennington College. She was a resident fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2008 and 2005. She has taught at Rhode Island College, Cazenovia College, Cazenovia, NY, and URI. For more information, contact the Department of Art and Art History at 874-5821.