We were lucky to catch up with Julia C R Gray recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Julia C R , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
Ten years after completing my BFA, I have fully integrated my painting skills with the ceramic sculpture education. I love the work I do! To this day, I continue to set goals and take on challenges push my artistic skills.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
The most significant gift my hardworking Father gave me was oil painting lessons when I was 13 years old. I was a rebellious and struggling teen. Knowing I loved drawing he had the insight to steer my energy towards art. I fell in love with the brilliant viscous oils at my first lesson. 50 years later I still I love my art practice. Through my long, evolving art career I have worked as a muralist, an architectural painter, and a studio oil painter, providing commissions and original art. I reemerged as a ceramic sculptor in 2015, after completing my BFA that focused on sculpture. My ceramic torsos can be purchased through online galleries and my website. I exhibit my work in museums, civic and public galleries. My sculptures are published in magazines and can be viewed on social media. Because it is important to me to continue to grow, I have opened my practice to commissions and public art again. There is a fantastic energy that is created in collaboration.
I choose the female torso as a consistent form to communicate about contemporary life. I sculpt using slip-casting and hand-building methods in my home ceramic studio. The ocean, it’s beauty and vulnerability, has held my attention for years. Living in Cardiff by the Sea gives me the opportunity to walk the beach regularly and swim in the summer. My sculpture series—SHE Sea Wisdom and Coral Reef SHE-Shell—feature glossy female torsos with deeply textured coral-inspired shapes attached to the body and base. The sculptures are bisque-fired, and then glaze-fired multiple times to create varied glazed surfaces. I enhance small details with opalescent and real 18-karat gold luster glazes for the final firing. I feel the body’s glossy opalescent form speaks to the mystery of being, and the gold glaze on the detailed coral patterns, symbolizes nature’s preciousness.
My Story Torso series of sculptures have a textured outer surface that holds a secret inside. When the torso’s six columns are installed inches apart, the viewer can see tantalizing peeks of the detailed glaze-paintings hidden inside. Separating the outer columns further, reveals storied imagery on the columns’ inner surfaces. I paint representational images informed by personal experience, historical art, environmental and current events. I apply my years of experience in oil painting to pushing my expectations of commercial glazes. I relish layering multiple colors as if I am working with oils. I see the actual results after the ceramic glazes are fired. I love contrasts in sheen and hue. Working with my series of six-piece Story Torsos gives me multiple surfaces to depict ocean textures and sea creatures on my sculptures, communicating the importance of human connection to the Ocean. The longer and deeper a viewer looks at my artwork, the more they will see, much like my experience of a sunrise beach walk.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I feel fully myself when I have my hands in clay or am painting layers of glazed images. Creating visual art is my life’s work. It is the most significant process for me to communicate. Writing can be a struggle to say what I deeply understand when I speak through visual forms, colors and symbols. Even problem solving is a joyful, creative act when I am sculpting. The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is feeling that I am living authentically, the life I wanted when I was five years old.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.juliacrgray.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artistjcrgray/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/juliacrgray
Image Credits
Sienna Browne, Oriana Poindexter