About Your Instructor

Janine Brown (b. 1967, Belmond, Iowa) is a Connecticut-based multidisciplinary artist whose work interrogates the domestic sphere through materials and methods drawn from home economics. Informed by her experiences growing up in the rural Midwest, Brown employs cooking, sewing, and traditional craft to examine societal stereotypes concerning women and the home.

Utilizing kitchen chemistry, Brown creates all-natural, bioplastic composites that substitute for fabric. These “home-cooked” materials encapsulate layers of personal and cultural significance, incorporating elements such as expired and leftover food, family financial statements, shredded U.S. currency, and the language of flowers. She then stitches and crafts the symbolic composites into objects and quilt patterns that examine the domestic constraints, pervasive myths, and capitalist demands placed on women, in effect making the invisible labor of the household visible. The biodegradable quality of the pieces introduces a critical tension: their survival depends on the keeper’s attentive care, paralleling the ephemeral yet demanding nature of the domestic labor the work critiques.

Brown holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business, an AAS from the Fashion Institute of Technology, and a BFA from Iowa State University. In 2025, she received a Connecticut State Artist Fellowship Grant. Her award-winning work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Silvermine Galleries (New Canaan, CT), Moorpark College Art Gallery (Moorpark, CA), and Gallery 825 (Los Angeles, CA). Group exhibitions include “Stitching the Revolution” at the Mattatuck Museum (Waterbury, CT), “NOW: As a Consequence of Fact” at Pen & Brush (New York, NY), “Liminal Forms” at The Invisible Dog (Brooklyn, NY), and “Tra 2 Mari” at Museo Area Archeologica Arte Contemporanea (Cisternino, Italy). Her work is included in the White Columns Curated Artist Registry.