A METEORIC CAREER: GRACELEE LAWRENCE '11

Photo by Gracelee Lawrence '11

BY SOMMER FANNEY '18

“It was a really important time for me to experiment — to be given confidence in my work. The art professors gave my work validity. I was given so much care and really attentive thought that I do not think is very possible at larger schools.”

So speaks Gracelee Lawrence of her experience in the Art department at Guilford, where she graduated in 2011 as a Principled Problem Solving Scholar and with an honors degree in sculpture.

Gracelee has since continued her education and work as a sculpture artist and has made a “meteoric” career, according to Mark Dixon ’96, Associate Professor of Art. Her art has landed her 20 residencies in the United States, showcases at multiple exhibitions — including a solo show at Thierry Goldburg Gallery in Manhattan — two visiting professorships and a collection of awards, grants and fellowships.

But Gracelee didn’t necessarily plan for a career as an artist. “I spent an inordinate amount of time in high school making art, and thinking about it and finding a lot of respite in that space,” she says. “[But] I didn’t think I would be an artist.”

Her experience at Guilford helped her unearth the calling that had been developing since her early childhood in rural Sanford, N.C.

Gracelee says it was in one 3D design class taken early in her time at Guilford where she realized the first week, “this is what I do.”

“It honestly blew my mind: This proclivity I have for material and form and space and dimensionality and power of structure and things that hold space, [I realized] there was a whole field of that.”

Gracelee sites the Principled Problem Solving Scholars program (of which she was in the first class), strong relationships with her professors, including Mark Dixon, and the space and freedom afforded her as an Art department thesis student for her success. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University at Albany, SUNY, where she is working with graduate students.

“Teaching is such an accompaniment for my practice. It allows me to bring in thoughts and systems and theoretical sources from my peripheral interests that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. It adds this kind of enrichment to my own work that I’m really grateful for.”

Learn more at graceleelawrence.com.