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Grace Orwen – RUNT

Exhibition runs July 5-27, 2024

Gallery hours 12-5pm M-F, 12-3pm Saturday

Opening reception: Friday, July 5, 5-8pm

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Grace Orwen’s exhibition RUNT celebrates the completion of her time at the Clay Studio of Missoula as a resident artist from 2022-2024. Grace creates objects as vessels for reflecting on her upbringing in rural Nebraska and the enduring impact of those experiences on her adult life. The object - the ceramic vessel - is a dynamic space to explore her learned ideas of class, gender, and community. Through the intimate nature of ceramic objects, the viewer is invited to engage with the work immersively, to understand the world as she sees it whilst being allowed to build their own narratives. In the pursuit of personal progression, Grace documents her thoughts as dimensional snapshots in time, through the enduring medium of clay.

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In the exhibition RUNT, Grace embraces this inner work at an intimate scale. Utilizing landscape imagery, portraiture, and a myriad of ceramic techniques, she assembles a mosaic of objects that attempt to unravel the complexities of shared cultural values, differences, and struggles. By encapsulating these nuanced themes within compact forms, she encourages introspection and dialogue within the confines of the small, yet elaborate, world of ceramic art.

 

Grace Orwen is a ceramic artist from a small community in Nebraska. In 2021, she received her BFA with an emphasis in ceramics and painting from the University of Nebraska- Lincoln. She has worked as an instructor at the Lux Center for the Arts and completed a year-long residency at the Iowa Ceramics Center and Glass Studio before arriving at The Clay Studio of Missoula in 2022. Her work heavily focuses on surface decoration and illustration. In part a collaged autobiography, it explores the humor in shared cultural values, differences, and struggles.

 

About Our Residency Program:
The Clay Studio of Missoula has hosted over 80 artists since the inception of its residency program in 2004. Resident artists come to The Clay Studio to develop and hone their work, to push themselves creatively, and to gain valuable technical skills and experience.  The duration of a residency ranges from one month to two years. Resident artists are provided studio space and resources; in exchange they support the Clay Studio by teaching classes, planning and participating in gallery exhibitions, and generally integrating themselves into the creative community.

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Gallery events are free and open to the public.