Artist Charlie Brouwer has spent decades building large, outdoor sculptures, and displaying them across the country.
A few years ago, he started to lose his eyesight, but he was determined not to give up art.
The drive to Charlie Brouwer’s home studio passes through miles of forest. A walking trail wraps around the studio, dotted with wooden sculptures he’s built over the years.
“I want to be an artist that has an audience of some kind,” Brouwer said. “I’m not internationally famous, where they’re flying my work all around the world to be in exhibits. So I kind of create my own place here to see my work, both the outdoor things and the indoor things.”
Before we walk the trail, I step into Brouwer’s brightly lit studio where he’s sketching an image of trees with charcoal.
Charcoal is new for him. He started using it when he began losing his vision two years ago.
His wife was driving him to doctor appointments. All the while, he was trying to figure out how he could continue to be an artist.
“There was never a thought that I was going to then not make art,” Brouwer said.
On these drives, his attention became focused on the silhouettes of trees. As his vision was fading, they suddenly were the most vivid thing he could see.
“I started seeing characteristics that we admire among humans. I started seeing those being played out in trees and in forests.”
So he began sketching trees. He draws them with big, bold lines on huge pieces of canvas. He still has some vision, and found a way to make art that stands out to his eyes.
“I picked charcoal because it’s very strong, dark lines, that have high contrast and I could see them.”
One day, he hopes to display these pieces in a show. For now, only visitors have seen them.
And over the past few years there have been many. Interest in his sculpture trail increased during the pandemic, and has continued.
“And some people will take a couple of hours. They stop somewhere, eat their lunch and just take their time,” Brouwer explained.
He said he doesn’t charge admission, though sometimes visitors bring him baked goods. “I appreciate that too.”
There are more than a dozen sculptures along the trail.
One is modeled on his granddaughter, sitting on a bench. Another, called “Happy Wanderers,” is based on a time when his grandson Alex was visiting. He handed Alex a walking stick, but his grandson was a little hesitant.
So Brouwer started to sing the song “The Happy Wanderer,” which goes like this:
I love to go a-wandering/ Along the mountain track/ And as I go, I love to sing/ My knapsack on my back/ Val-deri, val-dera
“And when I got to that point, Alex was with me. He started singing along with it, and we went off and hiked around the house.”
Lately, he’s been trying out a new technique. With help from a graduate student, he chars a sculpture with fire, a form of preserving the wood without using paint. The first piece he made this way shows a person pulling a ladder. It’s called “Hope’s Passage.” He’s working on a new sculpture, called “Appalachian Circle.”
“A sculpture that has been through fire—I think there’s something nice about that. I like that,” Brouwer said.
At 77 years old, Brouwer said he can’t imagine being anything other than an artist.
“I think as people we’re not so likely to change what we’ve done for a long time.”
But, he said, continuing art has meant finding ways to adapt, and change his methods.
And with his eyesight making it difficult to transport his art far and wide, like he used to, lately, he’s been finding venues closer to home.
16 of his sculptures are currently on display in the plaza at the Berglund Center in Roanoke and will be there until next May.
Charlie Brouwer’s sculpture trail is open to the public by appointment. He can be reached cbrouwer@swva.net (540) 250-2966.
