Kelsie Grazier: Unstoried self

KELSIE GRAZIER UNSTORIED SELF

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Vernon Public Art Gallery

3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon, British Columbia, V1T 2H3, Canada

January 12 - March 8, 2023

Production: Vernon Public Art Gallery

Editor: Lubos Culen

Layout and graphic design: Vernon Public Art Gallery

Front cover: Untitled, (detail), 2022, oil and graphite on paper and Mylar, 40 x 112 inches

Printing: Get Colour Copies, Vernon, British Columbia, Canada

ISBN 978-1-927407-74-5

Copyright © 202 Vernon Public Art Gallery

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the Vernon Public Art Gallery. Requests for permission to use these images should be addressed in writing to the Vernon Public Art Gallery, 3228 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3, Canada. Telephone: 250.545.3173 , website: www.vernonpublicartgallery.com

The Vernon Public Art Gallery is a registered not-for-profit society. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee/RDNO, the Province of BC’s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, British Columbia Arts Council, the Government of Canada, corporate donors, sponsors, general donations and memberships. Charitable Organization # 108113358RR.

This exhibition is sponsored in part by:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Unstoried Self: Introduction · Lubos Culen

2 Unstoried Self · Kelsie Balehowsky

5 Artist Statement · Kelsie Grazier

7 Images of Works in the Exhibition

20 Curriculum Vitae

Kelsie Grazier’s studio set up for her performance captured on video.

KELSIE GRAZIER: UNSTORIED SELF - INTRODUCTION

Kelsie Grazier is a Vancouver-based artist and the exhibition titled Unstoried Self presented at the Vernon Public Art gallery reflects her personal experiences with Deafness. The artist was born with mild hearing loss. Then later experienced a sudden total loss of hearing. Her work is a contemplation on the complexities of living with hearing loss and focuses on the differences between visual and auditory cultures and existence. As Grazier points out, she uses her art making to “create awareness around cultural identity and the human rights of a linguistic minority language and culture.”1

The Unstoried Self is a multi-disciplinary installation and includes two and three-dimensional artwork with additional digital media. The exhibition contains the suite of images of words in American Sign Language (ASL). Various videos of the artist captured over the duration of the artist’s project allow the viewers to gain insight into her creative process. Additional images of gestures of the ASL are displayed on a loop on a large-scale LED monitor. The exhibition further includes large-scale paintings produced on Mylar. Grazier’s mode of delivery is very gestural and spontaneous; the marks are the extension of her meditative state of mind in the process of painting and drawing. Despite the gestural delivery, Grazier’s mark making is fluid and calm, the feeling supported by using muted colours. The paintings are reflective of metaphorical voids in the human experience; the artist can only experience a sense of sound with the cochlear implant.

The main sculptural and video installation consists of video sequences captured while Grazier was painting on large scale Mylar film. The video is projected down onto the floor of the gallery where shards of mirror are placed in a composed pile. The video is reflected off the mirrors onto the wall in a broken non-linear pattern. The source images in the video capture the performance and acts of painting on large Mylar sheets. In the video, the artist uses the fractured image of her performance/painting as a metaphor for the imperfections of a human body and the associated human condition.

Grazier’s exhibition contains multiple references to deafness and its perception in historical and contemporary contexts. Even though the concepts of Grazier’s artwork are grounded in her personal experiences, the focus of her exploration is extended to an awareness where all deaf people must navigate two divided cultures: those who can hear and those being culturally deaf.

Lubos Culen

Curator

Vernon Public Art Gallery

Endnotes:

1 Kelsie Grazier, exhibition proposal, February 2, 2022

UNSTORIED SELF

by Kelsie Balehowsky

. . .

Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots?

No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground and sea, They are in the air, they are in you.

Were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious sounds out of your friends' mouths?

No, the real words are more delicious than they.

Human bodies are words, myriads of words,

(In the best poems re-appears the body. . .)

-Walt Whitman - A Song of the Rolling Earth

Communication is more than words or sounds, and language is more than written words. We communicate and learn from not only the words we speak and the words we read, but we also learn from the land, from each other, and we communicate with and through our bodies. If you are hard of hearing or Deaf, this becomes less of an abstract thought or idea, and more of a concrete reality. People who experience hearing loss depend on their own and each others’ bodies to communicate and construct meaning. Kelsie Grazier is a Vancouver-based visual artist whose work demonstrates this notion. Grazier uses art as a tool for sensemaking, specifically her experience with hearing loss and deafness, and what it means to live in between two worlds and two cultures. Unstoried Self is a multi-media, immersive, site-specific installation for the Vernon Public Art Gallery which navigates the complexities of identity, disability, language, light, space, and Deaf culture. The exhibition is comprised of four bodies of work by Grazier: photographs, hybrid paintings and drawings, a projected light sculpture, and video.

Grazier’s drawings are gestural in quality and nature; and are an intuitive conversation between Grazier and her medium. Margaret Macintyre Latta summarizes this relationship perfectly by stating “content is what work is about, material is the concrete and abstract matter out of which work is constructed, and form comprises the relationships in work between self, content, and materials.”1 By using graphite, mylar, and oil paint, Grazier creates raw and expressive works. Upon close reflection, one notices that some marks are strong and visual, others are falling apart as lines are erased, decaying or are white. As you get closer to the works, one may have to really look for the different marks by getting close and becoming increasingly focused. Some of the white marks are white on white and have an invisible quality to them. This acts as a metaphor for Grazier’s experience with hearing loss; a reference to the intense focus to hear coupled with the feeling of being invisible, especially in loud situations.2 Working with the graphite becomes a raw and gritty release, translating everyday rhythms into the thickness of the line, smudges, and discontinuous passages; an emotional, quick, heavy, and loaded conversation with self. Grazier uses these works to express areas of frustration, such as navigating a world that is not set up for people with hearing loss (especially during a pandemic) yet attempting to find moments of connection and calm within the noise.

Light plays a large role in this exhibition; it is also a crucial element for those who rely on visual communication such as Sign Language. Light is necessary to see, which in essence for those with hearing loss, light is necessary to hear; light is illuminating. On the ground in the gallery space, you will find shattered mirror pieces arranged on the floor. There is also a film playing that is projected onto the broken mirror, which in turn reflect, refract, and fragment the video in a beautiful yet jarring way. This acts as a metaphor for her shattered sense of identity.3 The video is a documentary style film made by Grazier, which documents the process of her creating the drawings and paintings in the exhibition. The video feels vulnerable; Grazier working alone in her studio, her white cochlear implant on display. Often when speaking about hearing loss and deafness, especially in a context where hearing equipment is being focused on, the prevalent messaging is about assimilating to the dominant culture; hiding your hearing equipment with an emphasis on “how small it is” or “you don’t even notice it!” In this video, Grazier is reckoning with these feelings and choosing to embrace and celebrate her Deaf identity while tackling feelings of how unnatural it feels to be on display, as well as feelings of isolation and not being Deaf enough.

In another area of the gallery, you will find a series of photographs documenting hands in different shapes and movements. These photographs are lighter in nature and blurry at times as they are detailing a movement during a moment in time. These hands speak to the eyes and mind and document Grazier signing in American Sign Language.

ASL is at all times composed of lines, invisible and kinetic; they are the paths that etch out a particular “direction of course or movement.” In fact, one could say that signed discourse is composed from an assemblage of lines drawn in space through the body’s movements. While these lines are woven with other linguistic parameters – a particular handshape, palm orientation, location, movement path, and nonmanual signals –the line is more than the sum of its parts. The line carries a generating capacity, an expressiveness all its own whose speed, tension, length, direction, and duration construct and disperse a particular energy.4

By cutting off the image at the forearms and only displaying the hands, they become dynamic in movement but fragmented. One does not have access to the full sign as the facial expression is absent (which is integral in understanding the meaning in ASL). The soft and ephemeral photographs act as a glimpse of a memory that is fading or not clear, inaccessible in nature. This relates to the disconnection present in society that makes it hard to connect to the Deaf community at large due to geographical and structural barriers. These photographs act as a homage; a yearning desire to tap into the memory and knowledge system of her Deaf ancestors.5 Deaf culture is a culture within a community. Thinking about culture aids in the circulation of meaning and is a process of acceleration of culture. Culture talking is an unbelievably powerful trait of humans. We express to each other all the meaning and knowledge of our worlds and in doing so create kinds of “imagined communities.” We express a world that emanates from “me” but includes “we.”6

Kelsie Grazier’s exhibition Unstoried Self is a critical examination of self and self in relation to others; a powerful kind of visual sensemaking. Grazier is not only revealing and creating her identity through art, but she is also processing identities and creating artifacts in the process that help us to hold and circulate among us and among others those notions that we wish to project into public space; a vulnerable contribution to the ever growing and ever changing landscape of Deaf culture in Canada.

Endnotes:

1 Curriculum as Medium for Sense Making: Giving Expression to Teaching/Learning Aesthetically by Margaret Macintyre Latta in Diaz, Gene and Martha McKenna. 2004. Teaching for Aesthetic Experience: The Art of Learning. Vol. 6.;6;. New York: P. Lang.

2 Studio Visit with Kelsie Grazier on November 20th, 2022

3 Studio Visit with Kelsie Grazier on November 20th, 2022

4 Bauman, H. L. (2006). Signing the body poetic: Essays on American Sign Language literature University of California Press.

5 Studio Visit with Kelsie Grazier on November 20th, 2022

6 Talking Culture and Culture Talking in Bauman, H-Dirksen L. and ProQuest (Firm). 2008; 2007. Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Kelsie Balehowsky is a Canadian contemporary Visual Artist and Arts Educator based on the Okanagan/ unceded and ancestral territory of the Syilx people. She received her BFA from the University of British Columbia Okanagan in 2014 and has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Canada and abroad.

Balehowsky’s work is primarily concerned with themes of the uncanny, technology and connection. She is passionate about community and in recent years her work has focused on curation and community engaged and inspired projects/artworks. Balehowsky believes art is a powerful tool for education, connection, and communication; her artistic practice is a means to observe, express, interpret, and process the world around her. Balehowsky’s son is hard of hearing which has sparked in her a passion for advocacy and accessibility for her hard of hearing community.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Unstoried Self focuses on the liminal space between Deaf and hearing. The modern world is structured in a way — under a medical model — that does not support what it means to be wonderfully, culturally Deaf. Historically, Deaf people have been marginalized and segregated. In the early 1800’s, Oralist educators decided to ban sign language in schools. The spectrum of deafness from hearing, to hard of hearing, to profound deafness has seen devastating impacts of this decision. Deaf scholar, J. Bauman, asks an important question that I reference in my art practice: “how has the absence of sign shaped our ideas, categories, thinking, experience, and being?” To be able to construct a positive identity within a society that does not value signed languages, one must explore their personal history, geographic culture, and ideologies.

I am questioning the meaning of culture and language, for it seems to have been lost in translation. The work comes from a desire to understand the contrast of the isolation and beauty in deafness — to convey the disconnect, intuitive gestures span across the large surface to take up space, both literally and metaphorically. Paper and mylar are layered with delicate and dark marks, built up to create a cohesive image. Through this, the paintings become a collection of feelings of longing.

Along with large gestural painting, I have found that photography, video and mirror installation have a place in my practice as together they weave a story about the disconnect between spoken and signed languages. I am interested in the idea that sign language exists outside of the presence of sound and that signs and gestures cannot be recorded in text print. Having grown up using spoken language and not having access to sign language, I found our current cultural systems don’t have room for innovation of what language can mean. By separating the signed words from facial expression, I am removing the context of the word within sign language. The body is essential. The meaning has been lost and it is up to the viewer to find it. The work aims to reflect the complexity of being in this ‘othered’ cultural space.

Deafness is a culture without a country. In recent years, there has been a shift in Deaf Culture empowering people to take ownership over being in between spaces. Deafness is a culture without a country. This liminality is now recognized across the world. I inhabit in this space, and even I have become aware of my conditioning to view Deafness through the eyes of hearing people. This exhibition is my response to a yearning to shift that gaze. It is difficult to live as a deaf person within a medical-based society with so many barriers; therefore there has been a change in deciding to be deaf — in my own way — as I move between hearing and Deaf communities. Unstoried Self is created to transcend the belief of segregation until there is no longer a feeling of division.

Kelsie Grazier

ARTWORK IN THE EXHIBITION

Untitled, work in progress, video capture, 2022, oil and

graphite on paper and Mylar

Untitled, work in progress, video capture, 2022, oil and graphite on paper and Mylar

Untitled, 2022, oil and graphite on paper and Mylar, 40 x 112 inches

Untitled, (detail), 2022, oil and graphite on paper and Mylar, 40 x 112 inches

What I Know (For Sure), 2022, oil and graphite on paper and

Mylar, 40 x 93 inches

What I Know (For Sure), (detail), 2022, oil and graphite on paper and Mylar, 40 x 93 inches

Fragmented Expressions, 2022, one channel video loop, 1 minute 16 seconds

Fragmented Expressions, 2022, one channel video loop, 1 minute 16 seconds

Fragmented Expressions, 2022, one channel video loop, 1 minute 16 seconds

Fragmented Expressions, 2022, one channel video loop, 1 minute 16 seconds

Light is to Understand, 2022, mirror and video installation, video loop 11 minutes 32 seconds

Light is to Understand, (detail), 2022, mirror and video installation, video loop 11 minutes 32 seconds

KELSIE GRAZIER CURRICULUM VITAE

EDUCATION

2007 - 2010 Fine Arts Diploma Program, Langara College

2010 - 2012 Bachelor of Fine Arts - Visual Arts Major in Painting, Emily Carr University of Art and Design

2012 - 2013 Bachelor of Education - Secondary Visual Art, University of British Columbia

2013 - 2015 Masters of Education - Deaf Education, University of British Columbia

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2019 Here You Are, Cartems Exhibition Solo Series

2018 Address Assembly, Vancouver

2017 PIENAARxGRAZIER, Vancouver

2012 Emily Carr Graduation Exhibition, Vancouver

2010 Langara Graduation Exhibition, Vancouver

RESIDENCIES

2021 Remote Research Residency supported by Arts Assembly and Access Gallery

2019 Wingspan Artist Residency, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC

2018 Thrive Mural Residency, Vancouver, BC

HONOURS AND AWARDS

2022 Artist to Watch, The Beaumont

2022 Explore and Create, Canada Council for the Arts

2022 BC Arts Council

2019 City of Vancouver, Public Art Projects Shortlist

2018 Bombay Sapphire x Artsy, Artisan Series Semi-Finalist

2018 Rising Tide Society, 20 on the Rise

2014 Order of the Royal Purple and Elks Lodge Donor Bursary for Arts Education

2013 Brissenden Scholarship in Art Education

TALKS AND PRESENTATIONS

2022 Workshop, Open Studio at the Vancouver Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver BC

2022 Lecturer, Audiology Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC

2022 Artist Talk, Remote Research Residency, Online

2021 Artist Talk, CARFAC Coffee Break Conversations, Online

2019 Lecturer, BC Itinerant Conference, Burnaby BC

2018 Artist Talk, Thrive Art Studio, Vancouver BC

SELECTED PRESS

2019 LULA Japan issue 10

2018 The Jealous Curator, Art For Your Ear Podcast

2018 Design Milk, Address Assembly

2018 Rising Tide Society, “20 on the Rise,” September

2018 Makers Magazine, Issue Six Movement Cover