Joe Brubaker carves wood and assembles carefully curated found materials to create characters with stories to tell. His exhibition, The Long Voyage was inspired by the upcoming journey of his son Will and daughter-in-law Claudia who are relocating to Australia in the coming year. The central homage to this upcoming separation is The Boy in the Golden Boat, a young figure seated in a boat, rusted cap on his head. The boat is decorated and gold leafed, a nod to its precious cargo and an arc of metal bends over him, offering fragile protection, a reflection perhaps on how little we can control as our children make their way outside the family home. The themes of safety, danger, struggle and endurance expand themselves in this body of work as Brubaker taps into the colllective unconscious, meditating on the perils and joys of each character’s sojourn on the stage.

Since his 1997 exhibition at Susan Cummins’ Mill Valley gallery, Brubaker sculptures have been populating collections from coast to coast. He has enjoyed an enviable exhibition history and remains ever fascinated with the creative process. As he amasses the weathered wood and rusted remnants of earlier lives, the figures begin to suggest themselves as Brubaker skillfully facilitates their rebirth, borrowing from a host of influences from Spanish Colonial retablos and santos, to African and Balinese sculpture and modern and contemporary artists such as Picasso, Louise Nevelson and Deborah Butterfield.