Clare Grill
Clare Grill (b. 1979, Chicago, IL) received her MFA from Pratt Institute (2005) and later attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2011). Recent solo exhibitions include Wish Language and Oyster, M+B, Los Angeles; At the Soft Stages, Derek Eller Gallery, New York; There's the Air, Derek Eller Gallery, New York; and Touch'd Lustre, Zieher Smith & Horton, New York. Recent group exhibitions include Of Flesh and Air, Marta Cervera Gallery, Madrid; The Feminine in Abstract Painting, Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York; Deep! Down! Inside!, Hales Gallery, New York; and New Skin, curated by Jason Stopa, Monica King Gallery, New York. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, ArtNews, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe. Clare Grill lives and works in Queens, New York.
Grill's paintings and works on paper draw on antique embroidery samplers and highly decorated 18th- and 19th-century birth, baptismal, and marriage certificates. Her ongoing "Samplers" series painted works on paper inspired by embroidery samplers made by young girls as part of their schooling, serves as a stock of shapes, marks, and colors for her paintings on linen. Her more recent "Signets" series takes its name from wax seals once used to mark documents and occasions. The title of her exhibition Cutwork refers to an antique embroidery technique in which fabric is cut away and the opening embellished with thread, evoking, across her work, what is removed yet still cared for; mended, handed down, worn again.
