Notes on Grace’s Art Practice

by Andrew Harper

Grace Gladdish makes maps. 
It sounds simple, but Grace’s maps are not cartography as we traditionally understand it. (see note 1) Grace makes maps for herself: they are maps of a new location or space, maps of where Grace lives, and they are maps that work as analogy, as expression, as relief, as aids to navigation. The art of Grace Gladdish can be understood as the creation of maps of the unknown territories through which she moves.

Grace used to paint. She investigated issues of gender, of the story of women. Her work changed though, and that change was borne of necessity: she had a child who has complex needs, who needs care and support. Grace still wanted to make art though and found her way to printmaking. She began using tools she had to hand, beginning with manipulating imagery on her mobile phone. This is important to note, because it illustrates something about Grace as an artist: making art, playing with images, studying them, and seeing what can be done, is intrinsic to her. Grace will find a way to make something, even when waiting the long hours associated with medical complexity and care. It’s also therapeutic to do this. In times of stress and challenge, her outlet is to make something, somehow, to find a way. It’s necessary.

We may begin to see how Grace makes maps from here. She finds a way.

This led to printmaking. Printmaking is a good fit for a person with little time, whose time comes in delineated fragments. Printmaking happens in stages. It may be broken apart, just as the time of someone who is a busy carer can be broken apart.

A medium that works is important, but so is subject matter. Grace lives in the lower foothills of Kunanyi, and that has become important subject matter. The mountain has complex, inspiring geology, and fascinating flora. It’s also immediate, and Grace works with what she has to hand. She uses what she has and uses it intelligently.

Grace’s prints are made by carving lino. This is long, complex, repetitive work that Grace finds meditative and therapeutic. It’s what the medium requires, of course, but there are bonuses. We might say printing making is a good fit for various reasons, but it’s also something that Grace has made her own, made sing. Her linocut prints are meticulous and breathtakingly complex. They are reproductions of the environs of the mountain that Grace now lives upon, but the rich intricacy is also analogous of an intricate life. In her myriad leaves and trees, Grace sees the arc and shape of her own existence. 


It's a good fit. 


These images are not an end point, though. Grace moves through them as well, has moved through has passed into another stage. She takes her beautiful intricate prints and tears them.

Don’t be alarmed by this – the linoprint itself still exists, and Grace exists – she can make more.

Grace does what an artist does: she uses what she has, and destroys it and makes it again, and makes it work somehow because that is what you have to do. She tears them and finds new configurations. They are no longer images of the mountain; they are something else. The images on paper are not end points; they are sites and material for more experiments. She tears them, changes their alignment, moves them, and she sees something new. She cuts away edges, leaving forms, still recognizable as lichen-tattooed rock from an alpine scene, but changed. The torn edges are not hidden; they show that this is paper, worked on and shifted, made into forms like islands. Grace takes the mountain and her interpretation of it and makes an archipelago, makes islands out fragments on paper, and it’s as if she’s making her own new place to be, or a map of the place she finds herself in, made of the fragments and the moments and the shape of her life, literal and allegorical. She observes her place, she interprets it through printmaking, she changes and manipulates the prints themselves, making new work from old work, using techniques and ideas and strategies. She finds something she needs to see, made of her own creations, that she tears like life tears everything up, and gives you fragments to make sense of, and does not give you a guide or a map, but says:

Here, here you are. This is the world now.

Grace makes images of unreal islands made from remembered mountain spaces she carves and prints. The act of making them gives her space in her life, clarity, and stillness. The work is filled with her reality. A complex life has no manual, so you must write your own, find your own way, sing your own song, choose your own adventure: because it has chosen you.

Grace makes maps, from the art she makes that she shapes and re-shapes and experiments with, making more art, making a space for herself. The works that emerge from this complex, deeply personal process are floating islands of calm wonder. That’s what they will be for a while. We may be certain though that Grace will not remain on them, because her drive as an artist is to follow the stream of investigation that led her to the territory she occupies now, and there seems little doubt she will do exactly as she has.

1 Although, if you dig into the history of maps and cartography, there are plenty of really ancient maps, or things that are like maps, that work in a more symbolic way to imply or suggest navigation and movement in imprecise ways, or could be said to be more narrative based, although that’s my interpretation. Maps have a specific place in human storytelling though, and have a singular potency; the making of maps in speculative literature is well known and it seems to be crucial in how we see a world, how we make a world, and how we move through a world.

NOTES AND INFERENCES FROM VISITING GRACE’S STUDIO

Grace’s art practice is influenced by collage in a number of ways. There’s a formal, quite literal use of the technique of taking already existing imagery and creating new works from it. While her studio has much evidence of the ‘classic’ form of this, where an artist finds already existing images (or words, or what have you), and the implied meaning of any already existing image or text is incorporated into a new artwork, Grace uses her own works to create new works that explore or extrapolate from the initial image. This is fascinating in and of itself, and whilst it’s certainly not without precedent, and it can be argued this kind of practice has long existed, Grace has arrived at as a logical step of exploring the possibilities of her own practice. She conducts experiments, some (but not all, crucially) of which are useful, and warrant further exploration. The act of tearing an image up to create a new configuration reveals that the initial print is not seen as a faithful representation in the first instance, but as an interpretation of existing spaces and places. Grace creates spaces that do not exist, plays with alignment and removes context – some of her most striking recent works in this sequence float on the blank page; we see them as manipulated images, we can see the tear – we know what is going on; Grace wants us to know she’s tearing paper and moving it. Her hand and intent are present in this kind of work. These works appear very like islands, and have a cartographic quality. The history of maps is filled with images that are by no means scientifically accurate, but are still maps; it is not unreasonable to suggest that Grace is using her art practice to create places where she has some power or autonomy. She takes the analogous status of how her life functions and, on one level, makes work around her challenges, but we might also see the most constructed images as works that are informed by her challenges – which is interesting, as she moves from art being an escape to art being a way that she achieves not so much control as insight. She cannot make art as she used to, so she now creates her work in conjunction with her situation, so it is not an escape but something more profound. The collage is literal but it’s also the artist piecing together how she exists and being informed by that, being guided by it rather resisting it.

The subject matter of the works is generally the bush and environs of the regions around where Grace lives and works. This area is both a literal fascination for the artist, and a source of inspiration, but is also a source of analogy and interpretation; when images are made of the region, Grace uses the complexity of the images she creates as a representation for the complexity of life: as life is complex, my art’s appearance reflects this. This statement from the artist became a way to discover a possible interpretation or reading of not so much the result as the process used to make the work; everything Grace does as an artist is process driven, and every stage of the creation seems to have a purpose that either reflects where the artist is or is in some way therapeutic or cathartic. The repetitive action of carving lino has a meditative quality; so too does re-configuring by tearing the apparently finished artwork. (see note 2) I don’t think this is about control though – I don’t see Grace as trying to find control in creating the work; it’s more about creation and using that to keep moving forward. Grace is not trying to hold back chaos (see note 3); she is attempting to navigate it, by making islands and spaces that float in the chaos (which is interesting because her studio is not chaotic, but is an active, used workspace).

There are many seeds of potential in Grace’s art right now, and what I think is really happening in overall sense is that there’s a interest in method, process and invention, which has particular sites and references, but also has strong potential to shift dramatically. I think collage, cartography and navigation as essential elements here, but I can also see at least potential to sidestep into radically different imagery or source material at some future point. I might suggest I see Grace as an artist who has a project, who has an investigation, and is committed to it, and will continue to make art however she’s able, because making art is a necessary act for her. She works very hard to give herself the space for the activity. It’s not something she could just drop, and that drive is crucial. Possibly the most fascinating aspect for me was seeing the older paintings; I liked her work far more now, and the work now is produced under much more trying circumstances. The desire and need to make is strong and the more strictures and obstacles are placed around it, the better it seems to get, more intricate and engrossing.

2 I was thinking a lot about why Grace tears the printed image as opposed to cutting it. It’s worth considering – Grace uses a ruler to keep a straight edge, so tearing is an actual decision; it follows as well that when the ‘final’ works are displayed the torn edge is a feature. Grace wants this action to be seen, just as she wants her intense lino work to be noticed. I hesitate to make a literal reading about the tearing as a direct metaphor for Grace’s life, which is challenging and things can simply happen to throw order around, but the tearing is not random or uncontrolled. Aesthetically I think it just looks better than a cut would, which is a solid enough reason to do anything when it’s art, but if we look at this as having potential for reading, I think it’s more involved with the way the artist works, which is hands-on or physical. It’s also powerful and a fascinating moment that is both creative and destructive. Tearing suits that need better, and it also makes the fact that we are looking at print, on paper, as an actual object, rather than just the image, quite important to. All of Grace’s art seems physical – she explores the mountain, she carves the lino, she presses the print, she uses the paint, she tears it, she arranges it – the presence, the hand, the body of the artist is always there, as is the presence of the print as an object in itself.

3 I had an idea that a blank page is the unknowable; making a new space that floats in the unknowable is interesting, but it’s also one of those things that could be a bit of a stretch. It’s just that the more I think about this art, the more the paper surface and form becomes important somehow; the presence of multiple collected objects, books and fragments Grace has in her studio really point to an interest in the physicality of paper as a material, and that having some strong input into all the work, which is supported by how much the most recent works make a feature of their paper-ness, of their object-hood. Blank paper means something. It could mean a lot of things.