About Us

THE STORY | "Brainwander" came into being with the first collaboration piece between Brian Ustas and Andrew Mowry in the KBL studio space in 2022. The name has since formalized into a label for the joint efforts of a larger collective of like-minded creators. Currently centered in the vibrant Cambridge/Boston arts scene, Brainwander manifests the usually elusive synergy between diverse people's creative strands: their backgrounds, their inspirations, their goals, their outlets and aspirations. It was only after twenty years of friendship and experience that Brian and Andrew realized the creative potential of such an intentional fusion; continued work under this name recognizes its value and offers a platform for continued exploration.

THE ART | While the initial combined works under the name Brainwander are recognizable as attempts to situate field painting and abstract expressionist impulses into the contemporary space, newer creations incorporate the individual artists' explorations of meaning captured in explicitly or implicitly represented subjects. More than it aligns with any established style, the Brainwander corpus seeks to elicit unique viewpoints and life experiences from the artists and onto the canvas. Brainwander art engages with the personals and the universals of human experience. Sometimes the art explores new aesthetic territories and sometimes it makes a statement. Brainwander uses various mediums, techniques, and thematic contrasts to bring new energy to what is overlooked or undervalued in day-to-day life.

THE SPACE | The Collective, through arrangement with the historic KBL facility in Cambridge, MA (part of the re-imagining of the old Kennedy Biscuit Company factory set into University Park, a mixed-use campus nearby MIT), provides dedicated creative space for its members.

Brian Ustas

I'm driven by the desire to authentically capture the essence of my ideas, energy, and experiences. My artwork is a snapshot of a dialogue between my inner thoughts and the canvas, where color and energy are not just elements but narrators.

Each piece is deeply personal, reflecting a feeling I needed to convey or an idea I wanted to share. My art is not just an act of creation but a form of communication — capturing and sharing what words alone cannot fully express.

Through my art, I aim to engage the viewer to look closer, offering not just a visual and narrative experience but an energetic exchange. I hope they feel something, good or bad. My work is both a storage and an outpouring of my ideas, a dynamic repository of what I believe to be true.

This is why I create — to capture, to convey, and to connect. More about me and my other work at brianustas.com

Andrew Maxwell Mowry

Andrew approaches visual art as a medium for self-exploration, iterative articulation of ideas, and communication with others. As such, he envisions it alongside written, spoken, filmic, and other types of media and expression. Meaning comes first for Andrew, and so a single artistic effort may span multiple of these to sufficiently capture the object, particularly in the conceptualization stages. If a work is matured in the visual space, he employs careful selections of color, texture, material, composition, and shape as needed, relying on previous practical, academic, and professional experiences to inform his choices.

With an academic background in scientific description (Physics/Amherst) and techo-economic evaluation (TPP/MIT), Andrew brings a trained analytical mind to his work. Additionally, a grounding in portfolio management practices (DCE, LSP, Ørsted) induces him to project world concepts onto an implicit high-dimensional space always characterized by world models, uncertainty, realization, testing, and simulation. A lifetime career in the sustainability space has postured this space towards the future, encompassing technological change, and allowing identity evolution (trans-humanism). Andrew's art manifests in meticulously crafted pieces, each element infused with deliberate meaning, that explore the interstices between technology and nature, serving all together as canvases for his reflections on the sustainable interplay of artificial and natural systems.