Home: I Guess That This Must be the Place traces Patricia Brett’s path from a poor childhood in Ravenna, Ohio, through three distinct careers that have shaped her artistic vision and her understanding of home. It explores the threads that have woven through her life: family, Catholicism, hard work, emigration, generational trauma, and the shadow of BRCA1 cancer risk. These themes find expression through Brett’s chosen medium of monochromatic cast paper relief, a process that allows her to capture both presence and absence, memory and substance.

This site-specific installation unfolds in three sections, reflecting the different chapters of Brett’s professional journey. The cast reliefs place an emphasis on the tension between forms and highlight “the spaces between”.

The Sculpture Center holds particular resonance for this exhibition. Once the workplace for the stone carvers of Lake View Cemetery, and later home to an architectural firm, this space echoes her own careers, and upon her move to Cleveland Heights, Lake View became her new Central Park.

Artist Biography

Patricia Brett is an American sculptor, printmaker, and former architect working in paper, stone, ink and prints. Her interdisciplinary approach, particularly her blind-embossed prints and cast paper works, blurs the boundaries between sculpture and printmaking.

She received a BS in Architecture from The Ohio State University, a Master of Architecture from Yale University, and studied printmaking and stone carving at the Art Students League of New York. Her long career in architecture has informed her artistic practice with its focus on form, materials, and processes. Prior to a career in the visual arts, she created Veronica Brett, the first line of designer swimwear for breast cancer survivors. She is a past recipient of the Sonia Albert Schimberg Prize, the Schweinfurth Scholarship, and the Charles Blaze Vukovich Scholarship.

Patricia’s work is in the permanent collections of New York Public Library, the Art Students League of New York, the Morgan Paper Conservatory, MetroHealth Hospitals, and private collections in the US and Europe. After spending over 30 years in New York City, she now resides with her family in Cleveland Heights.