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Manuelita Brown
PART 2: To be a giant
For the next part of this series, we're building off the Giants exhibition philosophy that “all artists are giants.” To do so, we went into the community and interviewed five San Diego-based "giants” about their contemporary creative practice and how it has thrived here.
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Today, we’re highlighting Manuelita Brown, a figurative sculptor with an interest in public sculpture. At the moment, she is also a full-time caregiver for her husband, Dr. Willie Brown, Emeritus Professor at UC San Diego.
We visit her in her beautiful home, which almost feels like a gallery in its own right, as it is adorned with her smaller sculptures and various artworks she has collected over the years. As we admire her artworks, her cozy library, and manicured garden, she tells us later on that she was very involved in the building of her home—an extension of what she considers “all-sculpting.”
Originally from Virginia, she met her husband while in college, and together they moved across America before settling in San Diego, where he became a professor at UC San Diego and she joined as a staff member. Throughout that time, she taught mathematics and took art classes (including two sculpting classes at Mesa college) before transitioning into sculpting full-time at the age of 57.
With a background in mathematics and “a technical, quasi-engineering thinking pattern,” Manuelita shares with us that she’s drawn to sculpting due to its tactile nature and focus on form and shadow, which she suspects may be due to her poor eyesight as a child and proclivity towards shape and touch—an experience she was surprised to share among other sculptors she has met.
Attached to her home is her studio, which is filled with tools, clay, and work-in-progress sculptures, including one suspended in the air. Her body of work is very much inspired by people in her life or universal moments in time that fascinate her, like the movement of tall people walking or the motion of a child tugging on their mother’s scarf in a subway.
“I work at trying to capture that in the sculpture... Even though it’s a static moment, how can this piece of art communicate the essence of that person?”
–Manuelita Brown on what intrigues her about doing sculpture
She also shares that she really enjoys working with contractors, engineers, committees, and crews of people—an aspect that draws her to public sculpture. If you didn’t know already, Manuelita is the artist behind several iconic public sculptures in San Diego, including UCSD Triton (2008), Justice Thurgood Marshall (1993), and Sojourner Truth (2015) located throughout UC San Diego’s campus.
Whether a figurative sculpture or a public sculpture, Manuelita hopes for one thing:
“My subjects are not Caucasian, but I believe that other people (who are not of my same ethnic identity) can still relate to these people. And that’s my objective—to have that sort of universal acceptance of whatever it is that I have done.”
–Manuelita Brown on what she wants people to take away from her work
She likens this back to a memory of her younger self seeing a sculpture of another little girl in a museum. Manuelita wants to replicate that experience for everyone, and as she shows us her works around her house, we feel it. There’s love, family, grace, pride, and joy.
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