He Always Carried His Ladder to the Job, 1989
Painted Wood, 96" x 120" x 48"
Now the Lord God Planted a Garden, 1991
Wood, 72" x 50" x 6"
Charlie Brouwer was born in Holland, Michigan in 1946. Brouwer received a B.A in English from Grand Valley State University in Michigan, and went on to study art at Portland State University in Oregon. After finishing there, Charlie Brouwer moved back to Michigan where he received an M.A in Painting and an M.F. A in Sculpture from Western Michigan University. Since finishing his degrees, Brouwer has taught at the high school and university levels, retiring in 2008 from Radford University in Virginia. Brouwer has shown at galleries and art centers throughout the United States and in Hungary and Poland. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Art Museum of the Americas Organization of American States, Washington, D.C., and the Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, Wisconsin. His work is in the McDonalds’ Corporation Collection, the UpJohn Corporation Collection, the Notoro Collection of International Contemporary Art, Poland, and the International Outdoor Wood Sculpture Park, Nagyatad, Hungary. Brouwer employs a visual vocabulary of natural and artificial objects, including tools, as metaphors to express larger spiritual truths.
*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.