OPENING NIGHT36 ARTWORKS
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CLEVELAND INSTITUTE
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Grace Liechty
Grace Liechty is a visual artist based in Cleveland OH, who is a student at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Liechty's work is grounded in themes of girlhood and femininity. Her work often contains the clashing tension of duality with critiques and deep appreciation for the societal ideas built into beauty standards. Liechty’s conflicts of enjoyment and loathing lead to the complexities of girlhood through such problematic themes. Liechty tells us through her work that sometimes the things that you love are what hurts you the most. Leading the viewer to take sense of the true complexities at hand.
Playing with Barbies throughout her youth has influenced Liechty’s work by having an appreciation, love, and sense of nostalgia for them, while also having an awareness of the harmful ideas placed upon women by these beauty standards. Barbie preaches that you can be anyone you want, but the issues that stem from this standard of looking a certain way deeply influenced Liechty’s thought and work process. Themes and interests of fashion, consumerism, social media, and identity reflect the pressure of conforming to idealized expectations of appearances.
Liechty’s work mostly consists of drawings built through layers of lightly applied colored pencils, getting darker and stronger in value. Liechty strays from bold intimidating marks and takes a much softer and thought-out approach to build the hues and values to create an accurate depiction of her ideas. Just like her themes and interests, her work is very layered and complex but always results in a delicate and intentional outcome. Liechty applies realism with layered materials to create depth while adhering to a polished, “pretty” aesthetic. Allowing viewers to see and understand the true complexities underneath the pretty appearances at the surface.