Interview with Katie Bonadies, May 2024
Grace Hager is an artist who works in oil paint and ceramic with terra sigillata. She is the current RWS EMERGE Artist in Residence in Clay.
Grace received both her bachelor’s and master’s at Maine College of Art & Design. As an undergraduate student, Grace focused on painting while their graduate program was interdisciplinary. She came to oil painting relatively late as an undergraduate student while trying to decide between a concentration in painting and printmaking. She decided to focus on painting for the immediacy in experience of color, “The faster I can get to a vibrant experience of color is my main motivation.” As a graduate student, they became interested in ceramics and in their last year began to use clay in their primary practice. They were introduced to terra sigillata as a Teaching Assistant and developed their process alongside teaching Foundations students about this material. They have been working in clay through the lens of painting for about two years now.
Grace’s current research is focused on what color can do to create different feelings or sensations. Music is also important to Grace, and the way that color and sound relate creates a visual experience for her similar to synesthesia–the experience of connected sensory associations. This process is one way she orients herself around a new body of work.
The colors they use each season are also informed by the sky where the color of light can be most easily observed. They recently discovered the ‘blue hour”, just following the golden hour, when everything falls into silhouetted black and rich blues. Landscape is their primary subject and they see little differentiation between working with canvas or clay, “I’d say my whole entire artistic identity is landscape driven.” Unlike in the traditional landscape genre, their landscapes usually include a central figure. Moving into clay, the central figure becomes the ‘sculptural substrate’ that they then carve into and paint.
One of the things that first drew Grace to clay was the shimmer of glazed ceramic. They created a piece titled Shimmer Beach with organic, tile-like elements which were then nestled in sand on the floor. This emulation of beachcombing has been the most direct representation of landscape in her work. Grace grew up on the shoreline in Connecticut and beachcombing was–and still is–an important part of Grace’s practice as a meditative exercise in observation. She describes the activity of beachcombing, “You’re scanning the ground and it’s the same activity as recognition or watching in the studio, you see something and that’s what you’ll reach for and investigate.”
An early moment in the transfer of landscape from paint to clay happened when Grace extruded some clay that reminded her of driftwood as part of Shimmer Beach. This process then informed her campfire series. During a school break, she took a trip to the White Mountains and the lodge she stayed at had a campfire. She had been thinking about color and light and wanting to build dimensionally in clay; the series was an organic transfer of observation to action.
As a color-forward painter, Grace works with terra sigillata to achieve vibrant colors in clay. She had previously discovered how difficult it is to achieve reliably bright colors with glaze in high fired gas kilns and has learned to make terra sigillata herself, using different stains and chemicals to achieve the different colors. When she first made her campfire sculptures, she described them as test tiles for terra sigillata. The series has been a perfect confluence of color, light, and the illusion of heat, using contrast and color relationships to create a shimmering movement effect. This subject is still fun for Grace and she has been returning to it to try new techniques.
Grace has continued the momentum and excitement around the work they started as a graduate student by accepting invitations and participating in juried shows throughout this first year post-graduation. The experience has been both challenging and rewarding, and some of the learning from this transition has been to allow for and protect slow time in the studio. Grace hasn’t had continuous access to a clay studio and what they are learning as they step in and out of temporary clay spaces is to be strategic about setting one goal for the time that they have in each space. This includes responding to practical limitations, such as considering the shape of the kilns and the temperatures they fire at.
She’s also allowing for flexibility in letting the circumstances surprise her and guide her work. Clay is still new to Grace, and she welcomes the ‘beginner's mindset’ that is fresh, curious, and open to all possibilities. When she started working with clay she failed a lot, played a lot, and ultimately learned a lot. Clay keeps her in the researching phase and necessitates working things out with her hands instead of her head. She’s hoping that working in clay will change her relationship with paint in a way that lets her access it in a freer way, “I think what allows for such freedom for me in clay is almost everything is reusable or rehydratable and has that flexibility, whereas oil paint will dry to point that you can no longer manipulate it.” She hopes the energy of her clay practice will continually inform her painting practice over time.
Grace has just installed her work as part of the Wassaic Project’s Summer Exhibition: Tall Shadows in Short Order in Wassaic, NY. The opening reception will be held on May 18th, from 4pm to 6pm. To see more of Grace’s work or to get in touch with her, visit gracehager.com or follow @grace.makes on Instagram.
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