Bret Berry is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Kentucky, having also lived in China, Indiana, West Virginia, and California. Their educational history includes studies in Sculpture, Music Technology, Chinese Language and Culture, and Ethnomusicology. They are a long-time Buddhist student and practitioner, having recently dedicated two years to monastic training prior to returning to Kentucky, resuming their role as mold maker at the Falls Art Foundry, and strategizing for this new life phase. Since leaving monasticism, Bret has focused their creative output largely on experimental music and sound art, which has come in the form of several album releases and numerous live performances, both as a solo composer/ performer and in myriad collaborative configurations. Their recent sculptural work was included in the group exhibition, Solve et Coagula, at the Kentucky College of Art and Design’s 849 Gallery. Bret preceded their MFA this year with a month in residency at Arteles Creative Center in Finland, and as creator/ performer at the Yarn/ Wire International Institute in New York.

Artist Statement

My art research and practice are guided by my Buddhist training, my enduring curiosity about language and semiotics, and my studies in an ethnographic discipline. Through these lenses, I create works that function as contemplative devices on the themes of spirituality, trauma, the construction of identity, and the arbitrariness of signs. I offer them to encourage active engagement with our human capacities for reflexivity, resilience and growth; to recognize possibility and opportunity in mistakes and errors; to view life as an emergent experiment; and to recognize our interior experience as the locus of healing, maturation, and agency.