INERTIA X RUBYS INTERVIEW AND STUDIO VISIT ALIANA GRACE BAILEY

Inertia Studio Visits and the relaunched Rubys Artist Grant program are partnering to highlight selected awardees that fit the overlapping mission of the two platforms.  As Inertia interviews and archives the studio practices of visual artists, one of their stated goals is to demystify creative practices, including what keeps them going and propels them forward.  This includes the daily rituals of creative life, an examination of materials and tools, and a realistic look at the balance between production and expenses. In many cases, projects of a certain scale could not be accomplished without access to funding and/or the opportunity to present that work publicly. 

The Rubys Artists Grants are a Baltimore-specific resource that help artists realize their ambitious work through funding, artists services and professional development.  The approximately year-long grant cycle in which the awarded artists focus on their project culminates with a public exhibition or presentation of the work.  The full list of 2023’s awardees with brief descriptions of their projects can be found at the Rubys website.  

The 2023 Rubys awardee Aliana Grace Bailey explores universal themes of comfort, healing and community in her new series, Soft Gather, which received a Ruby Grant in the visual art category this year.  In addition to her community art practice, Aliana is also a designer and creative entrepreneur working under the business moniker, Vibrant Grace Studios.  

Interview between Amy Boone-McCreesh and Alianna Grace Bailey 

October, 2023

Amy: You were recently awarded a Rubys grant from the Deutsch Foundation for your project Soft Gather. Can you talk briefly about this project and where you are in the process?

AGB: Soft Gather is a series of installation spaces based around fiber, color and healing.It brings together all the different ways that I interact with fiber such as rug tufting, weaving, crochet, surface pattern design, upholstery. I don't do upholstery, but I'm learning. I'm bringing together all these different forms and ways of working with fiber to create these healing spaces for Black women and gender expressive people to gather, to reset, to reflect. Whatever it is that a specific community needs to do, I'm creating the space around that need. The first installation space will be with Bloom, a Baltimore-based organization, and also one of my Vibrant Grace Studio clients - I do graphic design for them. We'll create a Soft Gather space for Black Maternal Health Week in April which will be interactive for at least a couple weeks. Throughout Black Maternal Health Week, there'll be different ways to interact with the space through programming. Right now, I'm doing research to deepen my understanding of color as it relates to environmental design.

Throughout this process, I will be having gatherings with their community before the art making even starts. We'll have a couple of gatherings where we talk about how they want to use the space, what types of things are important to them, to inform the design of it. This is a good middle ground between my personal art practice and my community art practice because it's definitely informed by the community - they're the ones who are deciding what the space is used for based on what they need. My community art practice, in the past, was often making something for a community and helping them do the “making” aspect of it.  [Soft Gather] is a nice middle ground where I get to do all of the things I love with fiber and have it be for community and with community.

A: How closely does this project align with or differ from past projects?

AGB: ​​I think the biggest way that it aligns is that this will be the first time I get to make an installation. I've been trying to get into creating environments for a while now and I think I was on the tip of making that happen for my thesis show before the pandemic happened. So I never got to see it really come alive.  Soft Gather feels like the buildup of all the different work that I've been doing over the years activated within a space. It's bringing together my business side with my art practice because I'm treating this like a graphic design project in the sense of getting community input and then creating something with my own skills. Also, the spaces will include surface pattern design, and that's a big part of my business now. So I am finding ways to integrate all of my different worlds.

A: You have studied community arts, teaching, social work, and the technical aspects of weaving and fiber arts- how does this dynamic background intersect to serve the work you choose to make now?

AGB:  As an undergraduate I double majored in visual arts, design, and social work. So I spent a lot of time trying to force these things to connect. This was before community art was a huge conversation and there weren't as many opportunities to study it. So when I was trying to double major in social work and art, a lot of people were like, "That doesn't make sense." and, "Why are you doing that? You have to do either one or the other." A lot of people assumed that I was choosing social work as a backup for when art didn't work out, and that was not the case. 

So at this point, I have more confidence in the way that my social work background is integrated into my work. Part of that is thanks to the residency with Roberta's House that I did while I was in grad school. It is a family group support center. I picked that residency because I wanted to get better at social work. I wanted to learn more, I wanted to tap deeper into that side of me. The director at Roberta's House just told me, "You already have all of it within you.  I can see it when you're interacting with clients, I can see it when you're interacting with the kids, I can see it when you're teaching art. Like the social work part is there, you just have to trust that it's a big part of who you are." So now I am just embracing more of that, I'm not finding ways to do it in a traditional way. So Soft Gather is a way where I'm pulling together mentors in the social work realm, and pulling together mentors with installation. I am finding mentors for all the things that I want to get better at and that I want to inform the space.

A: Let’s talk a little bit about your day to day - how long have you been here in your studio at School 33? What is a typical day like for you?

AGB: ​​I moved into School 33 on September 1st, so it's been almost two months (at the time of this interview). And for the most part, I've been in here every day. I recently started a part time job with Lifting Labels where I'm the community care and studio manager. The whole purpose of Lifting Labels is to prevent poverty. So they hire previously incarcerated people to sew garments, and I'm really happy about that job. It's my first “job” job, but I'm loving it. I go there a few days a week now and  it's eight minutes from here, which is great.

I am not a very structured person and I have done a lot of work over the years to release the need to be structured. Ideally, I would love to have this calendar of, "Okay, on Mondays I do this, Tuesdays I do that." But It doesn't work for me -  I've met a lot of people for whom it does work. I start my day around 10 and I always dedicate my mornings to myself and things I have to do for myself. So that's waking up with ease. I try my best to eat breakfast before I go anywhere, and then I'll start my day outside in the world around noon. I come to the studio, either around noon, early afternoon, or after I get off work at around six. I'm either working on an exhibition, new artwork, or I'm doing my Vibrant Grace Studio work.

Over the years I've learned, "Okay, what can I control?" I can control not having meetings in the mornings. I can control how many clients I take on in a month. Through my business Vibrant Grace Studio, I figured out how to create a business that really centers wellbeing - my wellbeing and my client's wellbeing. I use that to ground me.

A: What is the driving force behind your artmaking practice - how would you describe your work to others?

AGB:  I take up space with bold softness. I think everything I create is a contrast between soft and strong, quiet and powerful, and really having confidence in the softer, quiet elements of me, and knowing that that's powerful. Growing up,  it came off as if the loudest person in the room was the person who had the most power. I didn't realize I had leadership qualities. People just kept putting me in leadership positions - that's what my work is largely about. It's about me embracing boldness and putting it out into the world while being myself and maintaining my values, and also being quiet. 

My work is also intimate. It welcomes people to engage with it up close and personal. There are certain details that you won't see unless you take the time to actually pay attention. Walking up to a piece and actually taking the time to see the details that you wouldn't have seen further away is a big part of my practice. My artwork is also very bright and colorful and vibrant and full of texture. My self portraits is a recurring element in my work, as well as certain patterns that I use in several of my collages. My fiber work is large scale for the most part. Once I went big, I thought, "Oh, now I just want to get bigger." They transform depending on the space that they're in, so they look different every time that they're being installed. 

A: Can you talk about the role color and material choices play in your work

AGB: Color has always been a big part of my work. In the past couple years, I've been trying to push the way that I use color further. I depend on my intuition for color, and I’m trusting in that. I also want to be able to push that much further to challenge myself. I think where I'm at in my practice now is very much connected back to my childhood of making. When I was a kid, I hadthis big bookshelf in my bedroom and I organized it by categories: cotton balls, construction paper. I used to go around and collect all these different materials that interested me. I was really experimental with putting things together and playing, and that's when I started hand-sewing. I would make a lot of different pillows and I was always dreaming, “ I want my own artwork on fabric." 

When I was in college, my grandmother passed away while I was working on my senior show. When that happened, it inspired me to tap back into my childhood spirit of making, that is when I started introducing fabric into my work. I was mainly painting back then. And so I think the materiality of my work comes from that sense of play and wanting to play with different materials, different textures, different colors, and the free-spiritedness of that. I have such an interesting relationship with color because it feels spiritual to me. That's my spiritual connection, especially with weaving. Weaving, of all mediums, is the closest spiritual connection I have to my ancestors. And so with color, I feel like I'm able to radiate my energy in a way. The colors I choose are an extension of me. As I'm growing as an artist and as a person, you can see my color maturing. I just started using blue in my work recently. I made a 19 foot weaving and the colors were inspired by my mom, because my mom loves blue. So that was my first time really using blue. With weaving, I do not plan any of it. So whatever comes off the loom is what comes off the loom. But with that particular weaving, I took off half of it and I hated it. I thought, “this isn't right." But as I kept working through it and kept adding to the weaving, it all came together. It was actually in an exhibition called All Together. I think the experiences of challenging myself to use new colors opens me up to ways that I can both stay true to how I like to use color and embrace colors I don't normally use. So now you'll see certain blues throughout my work more. My person also likes the color blue. So I just think the people around us that we love can influence us. 

A: Do you have anything else upcoming that you would like to promote or share? Where can people see your work?

AGB: I'm starting my product line. It's been a journey, but I'm going to start small and just get a couple of things out the door. I'm going to start with blankets, tote bags, some home and lifestyle products. This will be available through Vibrant Grace Studio in early 2024.