Brown was exposed to the blues through musicians in the neighborhood such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Memphis Slim.

In 1970, Brown moved from Chicago to New York City's SoHo neighborhood which at the time was home to many artists, musicians, writers and dancers.

There he collaborated on multi-media projects with other artists including jazz musicians Ornette Coleman and Anthony Braxton, video photographer Anthony Ramos, and other painters like Grégoire Müller, Frank Bowling and Daniel LaRue Johnson.

In addition to collaborative paintings, Brown contributed to performing arts productions like Be Aware, Stolen Moments and Portrait of a Painter.

[11] Brown created a five-panel painting, The Life of Christ Altarpiece, for the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, St. Louis University, in 1992.

[16] In September 2008 Brown organized a symposium of artists, musicians, dancers and poets at Cornell University on the Creative Movement of the 1970s.

Speakers included bassist Charlie Haden, saxophonists Henry Threadgill, Sam Rivers and James Jordan, artist Tony Ramos, poet and activist Felipe Luciano, songwriter Malcolm Mooney, writer and music critic Stanley Crouch, designer Jean Claude Samuel, dancer Megan Bowman-Brown and others.