The New Generational Curator – Grace Miceli
Grace Miceli is working it with Art Baby, an online space where art has no limitations in creed or background…. It is essentially the future in art, well in NYC at this moment of time. It should be noted Miceli is an artist herself, currently supplying us with bras and panties covered with, no less, her coloured drawings. Micel does not give us what’s considered traditional contemporary art – traditional being the obvious choice of word when viewing her works and the works by other “Art Baby” female artists. This is the age of internet art… Get with it people.
I don’t think you can generalize about a whole generation.
Where are you at this very moment, and what were you doing before?
Sitting on my couch at my apartment eating apples and peanut butter, I was just at the pet store buying crickets for my lizard.
Multimedia artwork, poems, features in zines, paintings, as well as DJ work. Do you figure that the scope of creativity has changed dramatically in recent years in NYC?
Not really, I think that as an artist you have no choice but to hustle to make a living, so it’s important to be versatile in you skills. But maybe now it is more common to dabble in many things.
Can I ask what you attribute this to? Are there certain pop-culture figures, shows, music, apps, things in general that have played a huge role in the way you are influenced?
Probably the use of the internet, I think it has shortened our attention spans and also made it much easier to contact each other. So we get bored more easily but we can quickly find ways to combat that now.
With the rise of art fairs and commercial initiatives for art, do you think with Art Baby Gallery, you are trying to reverse this aesthetic?
Not necessarily, I think that art world has its place and audience I’m just trying to create my own version of that which is more accessible to those who don’t come from privilege or maybe live in a big city.
As a young woman in your 20s, do you have any doubts about where all of this is going?
Sure, it’s important to be realistic and stay grounded but also the only way to get anywhere is to have big dreams & aspirations.
What is it like being an artist, living in NYC and paying rent?
It’s hard! You have to work really hard every day, and work side jobs sometimes to make it happen, but when you decide to commit to it, it’s totally possible. I’m lucky to have a very supportive group of friends and other artists here.
What are your views on the current youth scene in NYC?
I think there’s a lot of energy and a lot of exciting things going on. I think everyone’s creativity is contagious.
What is the greatest issue facing youth and your peers today in NYC?
The biggest struggle my friends and I deal with is definitely money, balancing working all the time to pay your rent and still finding time to be creative, it’s definitely hard.
“Online, there’s so much to look at. I always have 10 windows open, so I think that if you come into a gallery you can have a little more alone time with work and focus on it a little more.” – Do you think that artists and their art work could easily be forgotten based on the speed of the internet?
Yeah, I mean there are definitely way more people putting their art out there now that we have the internet, so it can be easy to get lost on there.
You wrote up on your Instagram three weeks ago about live blogging “Teen Beat Off!” …can you tell us more about this?
It is a project I worked on with the LA-based artist Faye Orlove. We are both super inspired by pop-culture and this book is a sort of colour-in book instead of a colouring book of imagery similar to the pages from teen magazines you can rip out and hang on your walls, it features our own crushes from our youth.