We were lucky to catch up with Stephanie Grace recently and have shared our conversation below.

Stephanie , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

There is a sort of running joke that I am half feral, that started in my childhood. It was hard to keep shoes and clothes on me. It was hard to even keep track of me. I would disappear, barefoot, into the woods for hours or take off swimming in the lake until I was such a small speck on the horizon that my parents’ friends would worry. We moved closer into town when I was 9 years old. That was incredibly hard for me. I was constantly getting in trouble for going places I “wasn’t allowed” to go. I would hop fences with my fishing pole and head down into rivers to catch trout. I didn’t understand how you could fence off a river and tell a person they weren’t allowed in nature. It’s not that I had any particular disregard for the laws and rules, they just weren’t my laws and rules.

And I wasn’t a troublemaker, I just loved being alone in nature. I stole all the time I could to be outdoors. But for me, it was more than just running wild naked and free. I was driven by a curiosity that is hard to explain and to this day is still what drives me. I wanted to know things. I didn’t want to be told. I wanted to KNOW. I wanted to KNOW the exact experience of the cold mist hitting my face in that moment when you see the individual atoms of water and how they rise up and fall. I wanted to KNOW the smell of the damp woods, to close my eyes and separate out the moss from the ferns from the dirt from the pine needles.

It was almost a compulsion. I studied the ways in which the trees branched out, the patterns of the ferns, the undulations of the moss. I felt them. I traced them. I believed that they were stories, and if we could just understand what they were saying, we would understand what it meant to be human. I believe these patterns were inside me.

I would dig clay out of the shale shoreline where our summer camp was on Lake Champlain, and imprint everything I could find into the clay. I would use dried seed pods to create new patterns. Everywhere I went, you could find a trace of my own inquiry left behind, piles of acorns disassembled and reassembled. Rocks lined up in orders of their own surface patterns. Pine cones taken apart and reassembled into new forms.

When I couldn’t be outside, I spent my time drawing. I didn’t have a lot of interest in recreating the trees and the landscapes I saw. I was still trying to delve into the patterns that captured all of my attention out in the woods.

In the garden with my father, I would search the carrot tops for outliers and show them to my Dad. He didn’t have much use for that kind of information. But I was compelled. When we killed the chickens, I obsessively studied the patterns of their feathers as I plucked them. When we cooked dinner, I arranged the ingredients into categories, types, patterns, textures, pictures.

I never gave a lot of thought to a career or professional path. I was always motivated by this constant search for understanding. When I got to college and had to declare a major, I was completely lost. I took a Sociology class “because it fit into my schedule” to the utter dismay of my academic advisor. But it was there that I started to feel a sense of connection because it seemed sociologists were dedicated to the same kinds of inquiry in search of the same kinds of understanding.

After taking an art history class, because again, it fit into my schedule, is when it really hit me, art was all about the inquiry of what it means to be human and artists are constantly making lasting objects that are expressions of the human experience. I was drawn to it but I was convinced I couldn’t make a thing. So. I became an art dealer. And I spent 20 years LOVING my life as an art dealer. I had my own gallery. I was surrounded by artists who became friends who felt to me as though we “spoke the same language.”

It wasn’t until 4 years ago when my 140 pound Great Pyrenees was diagnosed with DM and started to go paralyzed in his back end that I actually learned I could make something. I closed my gallery and started to carry his bum around. We typically wintered in Florida but this one particular winter, I just felt he didn’t have the trip in him and I needed to keep him close to his team of acupuncturists, chiropractors and massage therapists. Not being a winter kind of girl, I needed something to do so I took a handbuilding class at a clay studio where I could park my car and still see my boy and run out to him whenever I needed to. He died about two weeks in. I thought I would never go back. But the next day I had to go back because it was the last place we had together. I was desperate to keep him close to me and so I lost myself in clay.

The first bowl that came out of the kiln, someone walked by and took it right out of my hands and asked to buy it. Then I made these hurricane lamps and my friend asked if she could sell them at her store. I dropped a dozen of them off one afternoon and the next morning she called. She needed more, they had sold out.

I still didn’t think I could make anything and with my boy gone, I had decided it was time to get my life back on track. I interviewed for, was offered and took a job with a gallery out in Jackson Hole. While I was looking for housing, the same friend with the shop called, there was a woman who saw my work and “wanted to do a studio visit.” I thought, “oh shit, she thinks I’m an artist.” She bought almost every single last piece I had made up to that point (that wasn’t already sold).

And that’s when I thought, “Maybe I should do this.”

Stephanie , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

oh boy, so much of the answer to this lies in my answer to the first question!! I’m a curious, nature-loving, animal person who is part feral and seems to see the world a little differently than others around me.

I am the most gregarious introvert you may ever meet! I love being alone. I need a lot of time alone. Now, most of that time is spent in my studio. But growing up, it was always outside, barefoot, hands in the dirt. But most importantly, if you don’t constantly have a lot of time alone, how can you know who you are? But if you’re not out there in the world, taking that alone version of who you think you are and being in relation, then how can you know who you are? ;-)

I love being barefoot, fishing, hiking and cooking. Somehow, they are all the same thing to me… And now clay falls into that same category.

I don’t see the world in terms of rules, limits and hierarchies… Again, it’s not because I’m a troublemaker at heart. It’s as if they are foreign languages. My father raised me to be able to do anything I needed to do. I grew vegetables alongside him and knew how to use knives at a very young age. My life, as a kid, wasn’t about entertainment. It was about how to be a human. You needed to understand how things worked and why they worked they way they did. You had to think critically and ask questions and use your hands. If you wanted something, you made it. EVERY. SINGLE. thing and experience is an opportunity. That’s not rose-colored glasses optimism. It’s just a fact.

I’ve never separated what I do from who I am. People love to point out how “on brand” I am. I look like my work, my work looks like me. “Does your house look like your studio?” Why wouldn’t it?? It’s all the same hands, same person. It’s all informed by the same curiosity and understanding.

I like simplicity. I don’t like having a lot of stuff. It overwhelms me. At one point, when I was living in Boston, I had decided that 26 items of clothing was the perfect number. and for years, I lived that way. I never had more than 26 items. I don’t like having to make decisions about what to wear. so if I find a pair of pants I like, I buy 5 of the same ones. I’m not wear the same thing as yesterday, but I am. it’s just clean! ;-)

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

There’s no such thing as a “non-creative”

There is something that piques everyone’s interest.

I always say, “Follow the thread.” There is a thread, this thing that sometimes when you’re surfing the web you catch a glimpse of it, sometimes when you wake up in the morning you have a fleeting thought of it, sometimes when you’re driving the car, doing errands, walking down the street…. there is something that makes your heart beat a little faster, that causes butterflies in your stomach.

Listen to it. Hear it. Hear what it’s trying to say to you. Follow it. It’s a thread that will lead you to all the places inside you that are calling you…

Artists have no choice. We have to make. We have to follow that thread. It is likely we would stop breathing if we didn’t.

I never called myself an artist, but I was always making, I was always following that thread. And here I am at 50 years old. An Artist.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I have a bench in my shop/studio. It’s important to me. People walk into my space all the time and say, “Oh my god, it’s so peaceful in here. I don’t want to leave.” I invite them not to, to just sit on the bench for awhile.

I had a gallery boss once who said, “You have to be ok with people coming in just to look. Not everyone is going to buy.” In that moment I knew I was in the right place.

The whole point of art is that it is an exploration and an expression by the artist of what it means to be human. Art has the capacity to communicate across time and space. It breaks down barriers like language, age, class, race.

When you buy from an artist, take the time to understand what in you responded to that work and why. And once you understand that, talk about it. Tell your friends how this object/this person, moved you/changed you. Even if just for a brief moment, caused you to shift a little. What inspired you, will inspire others, and no doubt, inspired the artist. In this way, we can create connection and understanding, without which, we are utterly lost.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.stephaniegraceceramics.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephaniegraceceramics

Image Credits

Lincoln Gap Photography & Clare Barboza Photography