Kenosha artist, a Muslim convert, brings bold colors, funky shapes to latest mural at downtown Milwaukee office building
Muralist Jaime Brown brought her signature bold colors and funky shapes to downtown Milwaukee last week for a unique artistic challenge:
Paint an entire mural in the span of one evening.
Brown, a Kenosha native, toted her tools and buckets of paint to the 14-story 310W building, 310 W. Wisconsin Ave., to paint during the Milwaukee Night Market, the monthly summer street festival.
The temporary installation now stands inside the vacant first floor of the office building. It faces a wall of windows, so passersby can view the bright, abstract design from the street.
"I like to use a lot of bold colors that typically don't belong with each other. Anything that makes the viewer uncomfortable is what I shoot for," Brown said. "Generally I like the ones that create a little bit of friction."
It's the latest Milwaukee mural for Brown, who grew up Christian and converted to Islam 12 years ago. Projects have taken her from Wisconsin to the Middle East and back.
As a Muslim, Brown doesn't depict any living beings in her art such as people or animals.
So she often incorporates subtle symbols in her geometric shapes and designs.
Another of her murals, on the skywalk connecting The Avenue on North 2nd Street, has seven symbols if one looks closely, she said. It's just down the block and around the corner from the 310W building.
Brown drew inspiration from her own Native American heritage as well as the city's history. Wigwam dwellings, Industrial Age-era smokestacks and the People's Flag of Milwaukee all are woven into the design.
"From the surface level, it's pretty. But once you get to know what it means, it gives you a completely different perspective," she said.
Brown hopes her pieces have universal appeal. Art speaks to people of all languages, backgrounds and political affiliations, she said.
"Art has a way of unifying everyone," Brown said. "For a moment, if people are gathered to look at art, it's if all of those distinctive barriers between them just fall straight to the ground."
It's a message that resonates with Brown, who often finds herself in situations where she doesn't totally fit in. As a white American convert to Islam, none of her family or friends share her faith.
"I'm not American enough for the Americans because I wear hijab," Brown said. "But yet when I'm overseas and I'm in a Muslim country, I'm not really fitting in there either."
Brown was working in the TV and film industry in Hollywood when she noticed a colleague left every Friday to go to the mosque. She asked him to go to church with her, but he declined.
She wondered what drew him to his faith, so she began reading the Quran and became interested in Islam herself.
"I ended up converting myself to Islam (and) realized that Hollywood was no longer the place for somebody on a spiritual journey," Brown said. "I quit my job and I sold everything I owned."
Brown spent five years in Morocco before returning to the U.S. She's now based in her hometown of Kenosha, but she often takes mural projects abroad.
Street art can be a male-dominated field, so she feels proud to be working in the field as a woman — and a headscarf-wearing woman at that.
When people see her painting in public, sometimes they ask about her identity.
A common one in the summer is: "aren't you hot wearing long sleeves and a head covering?" She is, she says, but then she gets to explain her faith and start a conversation about what it's like to be a female street artist.
"It also shows people that Muslims, especially Muslim women that wear hijab— we can truly do anything we want, just like everyone else does," Brown said.
Find more of Jaime Brown's art on Instagram at instagram.com/jaimenotjamie.
Contact Sophie Carson at (414) 223-5512 or scarson@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @SCarson_News.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Kenosha artist Jaime Brown paints mural at Milwaukee's 310W building
