Alum Interview: Grace Wodecki
Thank you so much to Grace Wodecki for joining us for a YACalum interview. Grace graduated in 2019 from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo where she studied graphic design and concentrated in studio art. The main subjects in her classes were painting, drawing, and sculpture but she also took book binding, b&w photography, and various other classes that exposed her to many different mediums. Since graduating, Grace has at the Carmel Art Association (CAA) where her job role has changed with the times, and she now works as a Graphic Design & Marketing Associate. When she’s not making art, she’s usually with friends or family. She loves to go on runs, hikes, reading, thrifting, eating, and making food with other people. Here is some information for those who are interested in keeping up with the art she’s creating now!
Website: graceanielawodecki.com
Instagram: @grace.aniela
Working at CAA
Grace works full time where she markets the monthly shows that the gallery puts on through email outreach, social media, printed media (postcards, posters, printed advertisements). She does many things ranging from creating a graphics on Adobe Illustrator to creating videos for Instagram reels. She also works with artists to best market their work and talking with them about their show, why they create the work, and helps them get their work out into the public. Grace says that since a lot of the artists are not on social media, it comes down to relationships with the artists and creating a connection where they can talk freely about their artwork and have a face-to-face conversation about their work while listening to them and pushing their story out. When it comes to challenges, Grace mentions that “you have your personal style, but your graphics can’t be the attraction, it has to highlight the artwork.” This means creating graphics that are complementary to the piece and work, not distracting. There are lots and lots of different art styles, so the challenge is thinking about pairing them together to make it digestible for the audience to view.
Personal Creative Endeavors
“It comes in waves. Sometimes it’s easy to go into the study and decompress from work, sometimes I go months without doing anything creative for myself.”
Grace is a busy gal, as she also takes on contract projects for graphic design outside of her full-time job! Her contract jobs bring her to work with a lot of Central Coast businesses, such as San Luis Obispo. She creates wine labels, branding, and marketing for wineries which can even take her to Napa! Since the artists at CAA are all locally based, it’s a great opportunity to widen her network.
Mediums & Inspiration
Grace’s grandmother taught her how to watercolor when she was young. In college, she “worked with oil, sculpture, everything and anything…but went back to watercolor in the end.” Today, she still uses watercolor and may dabble in oil. But she says that watercolor is her main medium!
When it comes to subjects, she describes it as abstract. Many people say that it reminds them of stained glass, with geometric layering of different shapes and textures on watercolor, and is sometimes symmetrical.
One of her inspirations is Hilma af Klint, a Swedish artist. Grace mentions that “she was doing abstract expressionism before it was a thing”
When it comes to everyday inspiration, she took a long pause after college and didn’t create for a while. Now, she’s figuring out what she wants to say without teachers, mentors... and finding what she wants her work to look like without others. Recently, she’s been doing a lot of work about post pandemic, and the concept of taking up space as a human. After the 2 years we’ve had, a lot of how it has affected her mentality is how much space she’s taking up, how many people she’s in contact with, the interconnectedness, and how many people she influences. She features a lot more outlines of human figures that represents shadows almost, like our shadows take up space on a 2D plane. She’s also interested in the duality of things, how there are 2 sides to almost everything, exploring that with cause & effect, almost like a Rorschach test. With this in mind, she has been featuring pairs of two in her work.
Studio
“Coming home after college was weird.” She didn’t have a studio space (in high school she had YAC, and college was classroom studios). It was important to her to have a space to create without restrictions, worrying about getting paint on the table or floor. So where is Grace’s studio? Her garage! Her roommates are creatives, so they turn the garage into a studio where they have their own space to work with their own mediums, such as ceramics and painting. Grace mentions that it’s sometimes hard to get into the studio. Working on her art is like isolation, “sitting in your thoughts and sometimes it can get lonely. After being in isolation for the pandemic, you don’t want to do more of that… you want to get out, socialize, hang out with people.” She mentions that she needs to dedicate time to be alone and to create.
How do you get yourself through dry spells, self-esteem fluctuations, deep shyness, or general low periods?
“Dedicating time and knowing that whatever I make won’t be presentable or good but the fact that I sat down and showed up is good. I always tells myself, “be a sponge, just absorb things. Take everything in”
The act of reading and looking up a lot of other artists helps her get through it. She has to remind herself that “you don’t have to show anything that you make” instead of “what if someone else sees this, what will they think?” Grace says that this mindset makes creating a lot more approachable.
Grace + YAC
“YAC prepared me for college as an art major. I had the experience with working with deadlines, having showcases, selling my work, and working with other likeminded artists. YAC encouraged me that I could do art. It created an environment that nourished good habits around creating artwork.”
Grace would go to YAC 2-3 times a week and spend 3 hours there and she mentions that YAC instilled good habits from a young age.
“YAC is a cool environment as a young kid to be around other students who were interested in different art styles, went to different schools, were in different grades. It was very insightful, and a very unique experience that a lot of other high schoolers get quite often.”
Words of Advice
“Trust your intuition, trust the unexplainable urge in why you make things. It’s good to be a sponge, be open minded to things, and take in as much as you can. As you get older, you can use your discernment to decide what you want to make, and can start trimming and pruning who you are. Don’t be too set in your style now, you can be any type of artist you want to be and that can change at any point in time!”
