tobacco brown

Social artist
TED Resident tobacco brown is a social artist working at the public intersection of environmental art and restorative justice.

Why you should listen

tobacco brown paints the landscape with the authentic medium of flora and fauna. She initiates living art installations from nature's products and materials with the intention of creating a collective consciousness that results in liberated and healthy communities, focusing on art as a tool for blight remediation and therapeutic healing.

brown has created social environmental art sculptures and installations for public art, permaculture for resilient community projects and blight remediation that results in the restorative healing from socio-political inequalities. She received her BFA in 1978 at Memphis State University in communications design. She continued to study at School of Visual Arts, when selected by portfolio to study with Milton Glaser. During those SVA years, she also studied advertising design at DDB+O, Young and Rubicam and Mary Wells in invitational classes at professionals home in New York City.

brown currently travels between New York City, nature sites, art residencies and communities that seek and promote healing and continuity. She believes that nature principles when amplified can impact the behavior of global cultures.

tobacco brown’s TED talk