Of Matter and Light: Brooke Lanier and Robert Glisson at Novado Gallery
- Brooke Lanier
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
On view: November 8 through December 6 - 2025
Opening Reception and Artist Talk: 6-9pm November 8 - 2025
110 Morgan Street
Jersey City, NJ. 07302
To inquire about the works in this show, contact info@novadogallery.com
Novado Gallery is pleased to announce “Of Matter and Light," a two-person exhibition featuring the work of Robert Glisson and Brooke Lanier. The exhibition, curated by Anne Novado and Eleazar Sanchez, will be on view from November 8 through December 6, with an opening reception and Artist Talk from 6-9pm on Saturday, November 8, 2025.
“Of Matter and Light” invites viewers into a profound encounter with elemental forces: the weight of matter and the delicacy of illumination. Through the distinct yet complementary practices of Glisson and Lanier, the exhibition meditates on how substance and atmosphere converge, fracture, or linger in states between presence and evanescence.
About the Artists:
Brooke Lanier, known for her evocative depictions of water, vessels, and maritime structures, similarly navigates thresholds of solidity and reflection. Her years of intensive study and appreciation of historic ships has shaped a body of work where form hovers between buoyancy and gravity, between architectural solidity and the impermanence of reflection. Lanier is also recognized for her commitment to maritime heritage, creating paintings that supported the conservancy of the legendary SS United States, and helped to restore the 1901 Portuguese tall ship, the Gazela. In 2022, Lanier was the Gazela's Artist in Residence. Through these works, she bridges art and advocacy, bringing visibility to both the
fragility and resilience of cultural memory embodied in the great ship.
Robert Glisson’s paintings, often begun en plein air and resolved in the studio through memory, pursue atmosphere and emotion rather than literal representation. His works straddle the line between realism and abstraction, dissolving boundaries so that light becomes an active force within the composition rather than a mere illuminant. Color, form, and space are stretched just beyond the familiar, creating inner landscapes that hover between perception and memory.
Together, Glisson and Lanier create a dialogue of resonance and contrast: landscapes dissolving into atmosphere, architectures dissolving into reflection. Both their works engage optical systems and material residues, guiding the viewer through subtle modulations of tone, weight, and transparency. The exhibition ultimately proposes that matter is never fixed, and light never inert. Each painting becomes a site where tangibility and radiance coauthor one another, offering us the opportunity to witness not only what is seen, but what is felt.
Artist Statement of Brooke Lanier:
Once things start to fall apart, you can see how they were constructed and what they’re made of. I have a great affection for ships and buildings that show the marks of age and the physical evidence of their history. Over time, they develop great character, like scars and callouses and the lines on the faces of old friends.
What we choose to commemorate is a value judgement. In my art, I focus on the things I find most moving, fascinating, or delightful as a way of understanding them better and sharing them with other people. Many of my paintings are love letters to obsolete relics of a maritime past. The elements are at odds with the once-pristine forms and surfaces of these feats of engineering. These ships were built to traverse the very water that constantly threatens their structural integrity. Eventually, nature wins. The flooded basement of a building in the Philadelphia Navy Yard is home to a flourishing school of goldfish, and the SS United States will become a habitat for marine life soon.
The paint protecting a ship is inevitably permeated during voyages and working life, resulting in corrosion. The more the water takes effect, the more you can discern the ship’s construction and materials. Water seeks the lowest point, flowing around rivets and fasteners, peeling up the paint in layers, revealing the bright yellow primer, the rusted steel, the gray of oxidized aluminum, the bead of a weld.
I’ve been fortunate to discover that maritime history enthusiasts and shipwrights are eager to share their expertise on these processes. My art has helped me connect with the communities surrounding the SS United States Conservancy and the tall ship Gazela, both of which figure prominently in my work of the past 5 years.
Many of my recent paintings depict aspects of the SS United States, a combination luxury ocean liner and Cold War rapid troop transit ship built in 1952. Her revolutionary design utilized aluminum instead of steel for her superstructure, dramatically decreasing the weight of the ship. She still holds the record for fastest transatlantic crossing by a passenger ship. In homages to the hull of the SS United States, I use iron oxide to depict the rusted corroded steel, and I build up and scrape away layers of paint or clay in a process that echoes the weathering of the ship itself. Her design combines mid-century elegance and architectural problem-solving to create a geometry that frames the sky and water so beautifully.
I was initially drawn to the complex textures and imposing form of the bow of the SS United States, since that’s what I could see the best at a distance through a fence in South Philadelphia. My solo show at Novado Gallery in 2023 featured paintings of this ship, which got the attention of Susan Gibbs, president of the SS United States Conservancy and granddaughter of the ship’s architect, William Francis Gibbs. She liked my paintings and invited me to tour the ship. At the time, the SS United States was berthed in an active port, and I had to get Homeland Security clearance to tour. Few people had this opportunity, because the ship is a giant insurance liability full of missing railings and tripping hazards. Over the last year she was in Philadelphia, I had the privilege of touring the ship three times to document her before she was towed to Mobile, AL, where she’s being remediated in preparation to be sunk as an artificial reef off the coast of Okaloosa County, FL. Since I can only make so many paintings in a year, I decided to focus on underappreciated views of the SS United States, like promenades, stairwells, and interiors.
Ceramics Statement:
These tactile ceramic sculptures are companion pieces for my paintings, and a different way of understanding space. Everyone not-so-secretly wants to touch the impasto surfaces of my oil paintings, and these sculptures are specifically intended to be touched. Constructing them helped me understand these ships more fully, since I realized how much I focused on little details of the ships’ exteriors but lacked an understanding of how the parts make a whole. You never think so much about how something is constructed until you try to build it yourself.
I’ve had vision problems my whole life and am blind in my right eye. In 2023 I developed obstructive floaters and increased light sensitivity in my good eye, and I decided it was time to learn ceramics. At my core I am an artist, and in the worst-case scenario, if I have an accident and go completely blind, I will still be able to make things with my hands. These tactile sculptures also make my art accessible for blind people.
My ceramic sculptures offer physical approximations of differences in ship construction techniques: Overlapping strakes of metal riveted together vs. merged in a raised weld are represented by layered slabs of clay with piped-on slip in raised bumps of “rivets” vs areas of wetter clay manipulation.
Though I’ve spent a lot of time volunteering to restore a wooden sailing ship with copper cladding, I realized I mostly understood the hull. I wanted to figure out more about how a rudder works below the water line to steer the ship, so I tried to build a functional model. In the latest iteration, I used metal hinges instead of attempting to construct them from ceramic, which is more fragile and prone to warping in the kiln. Since my local hardware store only carries hinges that swing in one direction, this is a rudder for round trips. That’s ok. We like it here.
To inquire about the works in this show,
contact info@novadogallery.com
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