Francine Seders Gallery: GAIL GRINNELL

GAIL GRINNELL
Born in Richland WA in 1950, Gail Grinnell received her BFA from the University of Washington in 1988. She started to exhibit her work in 1982. Gail layers and collages fabric as others use paint. Her studio is full of works in process hanging to dry from a clothesline. She presents the assembled parts hanging so that light can play through the transparency of the materials. Drawing has remained her main studio occupation since 2005. She has increased her vocabulary of materials to include sheer fabrics such as silk and spun polyester. These collaged fabrics are strong enough to be cut into the shape of the drawings.

Gail’s last solo show (“Bitter Love”) at Francine Seder’s Gallery, Seattle, WA was in 2006. In 2005 the Drawing Center in New York selected her slides for it’s “Viewing Program” and a piece of her work was included in a print exhibition at the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute in Shenzhen China. Gail was awarded residencies at Fundacion Valparaiso in Mojacar, Spain for October 2007 and the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ballycastle, Ireland for February/March 2008. She was awarded an Artist Trust GAP grant in 2008.

Her most recent solo show was in May of 2009 at the Lorinda Knight Gallery in Spokane WA and she was recently accepted for a residency at the Jental Foundation in Wyoming for January of 2010.

In August of 2009 Gail installed “Lightly Here” in the front window of the Bellevue Art Museum.

Free First Friday Lecture Series 2010
Perspectives on Art, Craft and Design

April 2: Gail Grinnell, 6:30 – 7 pm
Gail’s spun polyester piece Lightly Here is currently on view in BAM’s main front window.

BAM presents the third installment of its annual Free First Friday Lecture Series. Join art enthusiasts, artists and collectors each month for insightful talks and stunning artworks each presenting a different perspective on art, craft and design.

All Lectures are FREE and take place in Bellevue Arts Museum’s auditorium from 6:30 – 7:30 pm unless otherwise noted. Limited seating is available, RSVP recommended. Patrick McMahon, Education Curator, phone: 425.519.0793, patrickm@bellevuearts.org

Bellevue Art Museum Installation * Day (top) & Night ( bottom ) * photos by Richard Nicol

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The installation “Lightly Here” continues my evolving exploration of the relationship between the earthly reality of the body and the lightly tethered spirit. The work uses the imagery and materials from the art of clothing construction in combination with the drawn line to create figures that suggest an entwined sense of gravity and buoyancy.

The title – “Lightly Here” is from the song lyrics to “Boogie Street” written by Leonard Cohen.

“So come, my friends, be not afraid.
We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made;
In love we disappear.”

2008 – more general statement about my work:

I’m interested in the remainders of human activity and the traces of environmental events. They are telling of the pressures one experiences in everyday life – these traces and remainders help expose physical layers of the past in the present. I work to combine these layers – this detritus of human life – with my present movements in the studio. My studio work is an attempt at catching and combining the past and present in transparent layers of collage.

The material artifacts that I work with provide records of the very human compulsion to mediate the effect of nature. The attempts at reconciling nature and society are shaped by endless combinations composed of familial, cultural and biological patterns that form the environment in which we live and create. I wish to make a visual record of the actions that arise out of my personal dance with time, place, choice, and chance – and the limits of my understanding.

Technical Details:

How the piece was made.

Grinnell creates the many layers of her artwork in a production line, first making large-scale line drawings of sewn sections of clothing, like the ruffle of a neckline, a dress zipper, or the pleats of an inverted skirt.

In another sweep, the studio will be awash with the inner workings of the human body, the coils of the intestines entwined with bones, tendons and blood vessels.

Like a seamstress, Grinnell layers the transparent drawings, made from black or white ink on spun polyester and silk fabrics, with constructive interfacing to stiffen them up.

She adds translucent layers of vintage clothing patterns she inherited from her late mother, hanging the sheer, clear-acrylic-coated skins to dry on clotheslines in her studio between stages of development. She later cuts out the shapes like pattern pieces to fit into her free-flowing contours.

From the review: “Body of Work” for the clothes minded by Jennifer Zurlini

The Spokesman Review
Spokesman.com | On the Wall Jennifer Zurlini | May 14, 2009