Greenwich Academy artist gains national attention
AT 17, SUTTON BROWN MOCK IS JUST GETTING STARTED
The cicadas drone from the broad, leafy green trees shading the Mock family property in midcountry Greenwich. Seventeenyearold Sutton Brown Mock flounces down the stairs from the house to a barn with an American flag draped over the entrance.
Inside, a vintage pickup truck hulks in the background, contrasting with the delicacy of corsets made from collages, and jars of sunflowers and thistles. Mock has decorated the space, which she carefully curated to display her eclectic works of art. She has never had formal training — except when she learned how to work with hot wax, which is called encaustic painting.
“The encaustic, I studied under someone, because you have to know what you’re doing with hot wax. I’ve never had a teacher or mentor at school,” she says. “I really like doing projects.”
Ever since she was little, she has made her siblings come with her to the barn to
From page D1 pose for photo shoots. Her sisters sit in trees and stand in grass, wearing romantic dresses and school uniforms, looking ethereal in the light and grainy colors.
Mock, a senior at Greenwich Academy, has the soul of an artist. She also has the heart of a philanthropist and the mind of a conservationist.
Over the last five years, she has showcased art that blends her natural talent with her charity toward others and the planet. She has won a few prestigious awards through school, and has set tables for a Red Cross benefit, made wearable items from recycled plastic bottles and old newspapers and designed reusable tote bags. The pieces she has donated to charity auctions have raised thousands of dollars.
Most recently, she has been part of the design teams for this year’s Met Gala, the fundraising ball for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the 2019 Tony Awards.
“I think I still have spray paint under my nails, but definitely worth it,” she says. She loves New York City and tries to go in an as often as she can, but has not made it back to the Met to see this year’s Gala exhibit.
Her favorite museum is the Museum of Modern Art, however, and she loves the collages of contemporary artist Robert Rauschenberg.
Mock is thoughtful, and her works make those looking at her pieces think, too.
When she designed her wearable items, she wanted clothing that was sturdy enough to collage, and was drawn to corsets. She liked the interplay of the corset with the old comic books she cut from, where women are busty love interests who worry that “he’ll never see me” — a quote pasted onto one of the corsets.
For her environmentally focused pieces, Mock wants people to learn something, when they read facts on her corsets or when they see a dress made from 200 water bottles and recognize just how much plastic 200 bottles creates.
But her true passion may be for photography. Her pictures spark with life, created by the friction between her Generation Z perspective and her vintage soul.
When she is not taking pictures in the backyard of her family home in midcountry Greenwich, she is shooting film in the fields and grandmother’s home in Indiana. Most of the vintage tchochkes she works with she finds in Midwestern antique stores, which she says cannot be beat.
Mock’s artistic eye is completely innate, but to improve her skills, she has taken art classes every year and this summer, an intensive contemporary art history course.
“I think passion speaks louder than formal training, not always, I can see it in her for sure,” Jeanine Behr Getz, a member of BYOGreenwich, which led a successful campaign to phase out plastic bags in Greenwich’s grocery stores.
Getz, who has an environmental bent to her whole life, first encountered Sutton at a horticulturist garden show, when she made a dress from plastic bottles.
“Whenever I see anyone young, old, embracing, telling the message that we need to do more with less, that’s always exciting and interesting to me,” she says.
When Greenwich started phasing out plastic bags in stores, one of Getz’s fellow committee members recommended involving Mock. She designed the front and back of totes that her family contributed. Mock also designed and made a pocket book and fascinator hat from plastic bottles for Getz, when she attend the Royal Ascot horse race in London in 2018.
“She believes in being kinder and gentler and appreciating what we have instead of polluting it,” Getz says. “It’s not a fleeting passion. It’s threaded through everything she does.”
Through what Alyssa Kuchta, the founder of f.y.b. jewelry, or Follow Your Bliss Jewelry, calls “the Greenwich network,” she met Mock, who photographed a look book in 2016 and designed a charm for her company.
Kuchta says she was impressed with Mock, who followed the brand’s bohemian style while adding her own flair. Mock is detailoriented, eclectic and a pleasure to work with, she says.
“She’s 16yearsold going on 25. I always forget she’s 17,” Kuchta says. “She’s so mature and talented.”
Mock typically goes all in to finish extracurricular projects, planning ahead of time but devoting a weekend to executing these projects. Balancing school and art as a highschooler is getting more challenging every year, so summers are increasingly important, she says.
She gets it done and excels in school. In July, she learned she was an AP Scholar. She also received awards from the Scholastic Art Competition for her sculpture and photography. Greenwich Academy conferred on her the Visual Arts Award for a series of drawings she completed based on “exquisite, evocative and beautifully done” photographs she took taken in a Midwestern warehouse of store mannequins.
As she gets older, Mock is moving away from the dresses made from flowers or plastic bottles and the collaged corsets, and trying new things. This year, she is enrolled in an architecture and design class. After high school, she is leaning toward a college with a good arts program, but probably not an art school.
“I’m kind of all over the place,” she says. “I feel like I should hone in on one specific focus, but I kind of like jumping around also.”