We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alexa Grambush a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alexa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I think what makes my life as an artist rich and full is the posture of finding meaning in just about everything. The happenings of my own life, and the lives of those I love yield rich grounds for exploration and excavation in my artistic offering. While each project, or collection, or exhibition tends to identify some particular musing of the moment, I find they are all, at the very core, a part of the same stream.

While attentive to inner reflections and revelations in my work in abstract painting, some of the most consistent variables of my practice are my often-shifting location, and the resources available wherever I settle to work for long, or short duration. Painting from the back of a boat in Lake Michigan, using the Great Lakes as a water source for soaking and stretching paper; from the corner of a room facing flowering sakura trees in Nagasaki, using Nao Washi paper from ancient paper-making traditions; from the hills of Malibu, overlooking cliffs that tumble toward the Pacific Ocean, shielding the small community from the the busy hub of Los Angeles, each place is undoubtedly reflected in my work there produced, and makes its way into the fabric of my practice.

This past spring when I came home from my travels in Japan and Korea—where I spent a large part of the last eighteen months living and working—I began unpacking the paintings that had returned with me from their exhibitions abroad. It was curious, as I set them next to one another, how they had in fact never been to the US, never been seen by anyone outside of their countries of exhibition, and had never seen each other. And yet, I was moved by the connections, through-lines, and sensitivity between them.

So, this month, I opened a new exhibition in the city that has become a loose home-base: Traverse City, Michigan. The exhibition includes paintings that span several collections from the past two years: created in different countries, sourcing different materials, working through manifold challenges and constraints. Many of these pieces traveled with me for exhibitions in Japan and Korea, then back home to the United States. Some were exhibited in places where I do not speak the language, save the shared experience of viewing the work, and I found that even then we can be worlds unto ourselves. There are some places that language cannot go. Even so, with the help of talented, generous, clever friends, my intentions and narrations were translated to giving, open audiences in those countries (special thanks to Esther Chung, Tomomi Yonetake Von Rembow, Seho Lee, and Dave Doebrick).

Until now, several of these paintings have been seen in-person only in those countries of exhibition, some have been seen through a screen, and many have never been seen at all. Putting them together in one exhibit here at home was revelatory in discerning the hope toward which they all seem to be reaching: a current of peace, the assurance of welcome, the invitation of grace, and a reminder that all that we see is not all that there is. 

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was born and raised in Michigan, loving the Great Lakes and the time I spent living with my sisters on a boat in Traverse City. I moved to California when I was eighteen, and after school and working a more traditional post-college job, I took one of the largest leaps of faith in my life: I began to work as an artist. Despite the challenges and obstacles accompanying a primarily self-taught artist and small-business owner, while I am creating, I witness myself being remade in the wake of that very faith and grace which inspired, impelled and carries the journey, and me.

My innate sensitivity to space and dynamics, both interpersonal and aesthetic, informs my creative interactions which center most in watercolor and acrylic painting work. My artistic expressions are guided by my deeply held values of truth and sincerity, and my desire to see the sacred in the everyday. 

My work attempts to approach and explore the absolutely corporeal, binding experience of being alive and the deeply mysterious nature of being so through abstract expressions. My practice is tied to my perception that the world is complex, miraculous, and full of wonder, and is generally twofold: a longing to make sense of this collision of tenderness, grief, joy, and mystery, and a desire to offer outwardly a place to rest that is safe, gentle, and compassionate.

My approach is observationally driven, watchfully motivated, and thoughtfully attentive to those perceptions within and without. I indulge in the complex, and rest in distilled simplicity. Shapes and movements are treasures of emotion, memory, reflection, observation, and thought. What I hope to express, and what comes with incorporating the unexpected, the mundane, and the mystery is that our world, and life are much more full of the miraculous than even the imagination could hope to beget.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I have this awareness of my own driving tendency to be and stay warm. I joke a lot about my lizard-like habits of seeking a heated rock to rest on, or basking in a patch of hot sunlight in my very sun-centric existence, and find that as the days turn colder, I’m not only huddling under a blanket, but huddling under a blanket about two inches from a space heater each morning as I begin my day.

Hovering on the axis tilting rapidly toward winter, I’m even more attuned to this gravitational movement of mine: a movement toward the sun, toward the warmth, toward the light. I find an interesting contemplation in the deeper realms as I see myself doing the same–feeling the piercing chill, trying to stay in the light, and orienting myself toward the truest embrace of safe, welcoming warmth. 

It’s an inescapable reality that for now, we can experience warmth only at the counterpoint of chill, and we can appreciate heat only insofar as we have suffered the frozen. Perhaps the greater the depth of pain, the larger the chasm has become for a well of joy. I think of the loving care in putting a tiny sock on a baby’s foot, tending a fire in the family’s hearth, sharing a blanket with a friend, offering a warm cup of tea. They’re in response to the cold toes, the brisk floor, the shivering shoulders, the grieving heart. How loving, how remarkable, how sustaining.

I’m moved by the need of the winters and the dark nights, which can feel so perennial, and I shiver too, all the while hoping that my work serves as a beacon to the avenue of pressing nearer to the source of love and goodness and companionship in the midst of the oft-blowing and bitterly chilly winds of being.

All of my work, really, centers on the source of light and welcome to which I’m always drawn; seeking the consistency of a warmth that will not wane. My hope is that these paintings serve to bring any space in which they rest a sense of sanctuary, and peace.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Once, after an exhibition opening in Seoul, South Korea, I received a message through the contact form on my website. It read:

“Hello!

I came across your collection at Cafe Haru and One Day in Seongsu.

I really loved the art pieces, and felt a sense of healing when I was watching the pieces (probably the first time I felt really happy to see an art piece). It’s my first time purchasing art ever! And would love to know what the process looks like and how to move forward?

Thank you and looking forward to hearing from you.”

At the time, this person was not following my artistic journey, was not a collector of fine art, was not even necessarily looking to feel, or be moved. I imagine he was going to get a cup of coffee. It was the the middle of a weekday, during a work week–a routine motion, a regular haunt. In his neighborhood, a humble beverage, a decision to enter, to lift his eyes. And there! Just there, in the midst of every rote gesture, grace extends a hand, if we have the eyes to see.

One of the most rewarding aspects of being an artist is the camaraderie of hope and vulnerability shared in the creation and reception of any work, and the potential for art to really communicate on a plane that is transcendent. Nothing is immune from the movement of the miraculous. And nothing, but we ourselves, can prevent it from breaking in, and over us. My intention, and my hope is that my work can say and move more than language could. I hope my work, in being seen, helps to usher in the unseen. Those moments when I sense it serves its purpose hearten me to continue with joy and gratitude.

Image Credits

Lindsey Makuwatsine, Josh Kennedy, Meg Simpson