The word imbue refers to physical and mental/spiritual saturation, and Grinnell is working with both ideas.  The flooding or soaking of the paper with ink or acrylic is an important step in making the work. Grinnell notes that her thoughts and feelings fill and preoccupy her mind in a similar fashion and serve as a support for the activities involved in making the work.  Her process has always mirrored the rhythm of domestic life in which tasks are performed while the mind remains free to follow its own direction.  The rubbing of candle wax on paper and subsequent removal with a hot iron mimics the physicality and tediously repetitive nature of domestic activities.  Small scale drawings where the hand moves across the paper while the mind is preoccupied with family life or personal concerns make reference to traditional handwork.  As a counterpoint, at one time Grinnell considered medical illustration as a career; she was a careful observer, attentive to detail and able to deconstruct form.  These skills balance her more associative style of working.  Some of Grinnell’s imagery is taken from domestic life – knotted and tangled thread, the links of a charm bracelet, or the frill of a little girl’s dress.  She also produces forms more suggestive of cellular structure, body parts and internal organs, or plant life. In many of the drawings Grinnell layers and overlaps these vocabularies stressing how the domestic and natural worlds parallel one another.  This show included roughly thirty –five drawings on acrylic soaked tissue.  "Imbued", the large wax and sumi piece, combines rubbings of numerous softoleum blocks cut during the nineties and recently retired from printing.

Grinnell’s previous solo show at the Seders Gallery was in 1999.  Since that time, she has had one-person shows at the Spokane Art School Gallery (1999) and the Lorinda Knight Gallery in Spokane (2000).  Her work has been included in Artists Making Prints and 4 x 4:  Four Decades of School of Art Alumni (both 2000 at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, School of Art,  University of Washington) and Manufactured Nature, 1^st Avenue Window Collaborative Installation, Rental/Sales Gallery, Seattle Art Museum (2000).