Gratia Brown Artworks
Artist Statement
The oldest known fragment of ceramic is a small thing, roughly triangular, a yellow-brown dust color - unassuming. This fragment holds many marks: on one side along the rim there are decorative marks - dots in a line perhaps made by impressing a stick into the wet clay. The surface blackened by the unmistakable touch of flame. Fingerprints and pinching texture appear where the artist coaxed shape and function from the clay.
Fragments represent to me these hidden narratives that connect us to events and people. Fragments are cropped from a resolved place and form. Edges and contours hint at the original object’s function and the events that led to fragmentation. Fragments become a talisman binding the viewer to unknown people, intentions, and events.
My work celebrates the characteristics of the fragment - mobile, poetic, irregular, unstable, and precarious in their lack of resolution.
about gratia
Gratia loves to make things, break things, and create pieces that celebrate the poetic nature of fragments and debris.
Her sculpture and functional work are exhibited in galleries in the U.S. and abroad. Her work was awarded a Recognition Award at the 4th UNICUM Ceramics Triennial at the National Museum of Slovenia and Second Place at the Visions in Clay exhibit at the LH Horton Gallery. Recent invitational and juried exhibit venues include Rourke Art Gallery + Museum (MN), Blue Line Arts (CA), Archie Bray Foundation (MT), Bredin Lee Gallery (MO), and Bradley University (IL).
Gratia’s work was featured in Part and Parcel, a 2019 NCECA Conference Concurrent Exhibition at Studio 394 in the Northrup King Building, Minneapolis, MN, and the 8th South Dakota Governor’s Biennial, a traveling exhibition installed at multiple venues, including the South Dakota Museum of Art, Brookings, and the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Sciences, Sioux Falls.
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Residencies include Studio Paducah (KY), Northern State University (SD), University of North Dakota (ND), The Ceramics Center (IA), Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts (ME), I-Park (CT) and The Hungarian Multicultural Center, Budapest, Hungary. She has been awarded scholarships and assistantships at Haystack Mountain School of Craft (ME), Penland School of Craft (NC), and Arrowmont School of Art and Craft (TN).
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Gratia earned a Master of Fine Art in Ceramics from Pennsylvania Western University Edinboro and a Bachelor of Art in the History of Art & Architecture and Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Valley City State University, Valley City, ND, where she teaches ceramics, three-dimensional design, art and craft history, and art education methods.
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