Grace Hall: Creating Worlds Beyond Walls
In a world where all art is mimicked, Grace wants to find out if what she creates is familiar.
For this generation of creatives, inspiration is increasingly coming from what we grew up consuming online. Although Nashville contemporary artist Grace Hall spends most of her time offline painting, but she finds herself on the internet, diving down rabbit holes of new art.
“Honestly, weird answer, but the internet is my inspiration. Life is so fast, our algorithms, our phones, and maybe that's how our brains are evolving. I just look up hashtags and find so much inspiration.”
Raised by artists and trained at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, her work encompasses experimental art, sculpture, installations, portraits, and much more, all the while spearheading a rock band [Pressure Heaven]. Grace channels the world around her, and her work reflects it.
“I get more inspired by people that don’t paint; maybe they do music, fashion, movies, really whatever…those are the people who don't necessarily do what I'm doing, but we join to collaborate.”
After art school, Grace returned home to Nashville and began painting mural commissions. Around the same time, at the dawn of the COVID-19 outbreak, a tornado ripped through the city. The damage was especially brutal on the east side, the most culturally vibrant neighborhood and the heart of creative expression in the 615. The area was left yearning for a rebuild not only of infrastructure but of art, color, and culture. My first time engaging with her art was at one of the Five Points’ established spots, The Treehouse Restaurant. Formerly a family home, the treehouse [so to speak] is a cozy indoor-outdoor restaurant and bar now home to one of Grace’s most striking pieces. Inspired by mid-century pop art, the interactive mural incorporates a mirror and sits perfectly in the courtyard–it seriously makes you feel like you’re outside a retro diner.
Restaurants featuring Grace’s work:
The Treehouse Restaurant (East Nashville)
Bravado Small Plates & Pizzabar (Franklin)
The Row Kitchen & Pub (Downtown Nashville) (country music theme)
Bravado Restaurant in Franklin was such a fan of her work; they had Grace paint 5 murals inside the dining area during construction. The work uses interlaced patterns and bold colors that bring each piece to life, shifting with the viewer’s perspective. If you ever find yourself in one of these Nashville restaurants, keep an eye out for Grace’s work. Hall’s newest work will be available once the right opportunity to display her personal pieces in gallery format.
Getting this seat with the homies for dinner, so sick
“I like creating worlds more than just stuff on the walls.”
Although she is a talented muralist, Grace’s true passion as an artist lies in set design and installations. “I like creating worlds more than just stuff on the walls. Gallery art is very niche, but I’ll make my career doing sculptures and set designs.”
This fall, she’s assisted with several intriguing projects, even by her standards. Forestry exhibitions, concert stages, textured backdrops, museum exhibits, and an incredible Halloween installation in downtown Nashville. She even decorated a casket for meme rapper and comedian Dax. Her goal is to create new worlds with a current of randomness that sits in the right niche. Creations that consume you and leave you inspired, turning observations into an experience. Though she doesn’t feel a consistent style rings true in every piece of work, her intention as a creator is to find flow and organization through the chaos. She painted a stage for Cassandra Coleman’s End of Your Love album (below), and Grace is currently painting a mural for Kings of Leon replicating their album cover.
This bizarre mask (below), depicting a green bass crafted by paper-mache down to the gills was made for a DJ set, encompassed with an opening on the fish’s belly for visibility, and eyes that light up and change colors during the performance. We laughed out loud as I helped her take the giant fish head off the top of her strategically packed living room supply shelf, where it will be safe until next bass season.
“Each piece becomes more so like I’m practicing. Like practicing an instrument.”
The piece that separates Grace from others is her willingness to experiment and her adaptability to the unknown. She embraces new challenges every day, and feels they sharpen her toolbox as a versatile artist. Often losing sleep and free time to commissioned projects. She can not and will not rest when fulfillment comes from what she creates from within. “I don’t know how to relax. My relaxation is making art. I wrote this down today: living is doing something–if I’m productive and making something that’s a restful day to me, even if it isn’t mental rest.”
In a time when we let mindless consumption take over, artists have to reach a state of enjoying original creation. AI will only get more and more prevalent; the line where inspiration ends and imitation begins will become harder to define. The rewards of referencing reveal the empathetic commonalities between ourselves, our environment, and each other.
Grace believes everything she consumes can be transformed into personal experience and inspiration. She asks philosophically, why can’t you be the consumer and the maker? Just create, practice, try.
We’ve gotten to a point where we’ve consumed enough. The knowledge to create is already integrated. Why wait?
Check out all of Grace Hall’s work on her website and Instagram.
Instagram → @Gracemhall_
Photography: Adrian Zachary (@laylow.adri_)