By Julianne Homokay
Special to the Alpine Mountaineer
You’ve probably seen her byline here in this newspaper. Or perhaps you read her copy back when she worked in advertising. But first and foremost, Elise Gray is an artist who calls Running Springs home.
Gray earned a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Creative Writing from Antioch University, and she now works as a content creator for a tech company. However, “art is my first love,” she said. She can write all day long without it draining her. But she loves making art so much that she never wanted it to be the thing that puts food on the table. “My art has to be for me, and come from this personal place,” she said.
After one stroll through the Mountain Arts Gallery in Lake Arrowhead Village, anyone might conclude that our mountain community is rife with talent, with so many of our artists taking their inspiration from these beautiful natural surroundings. What sets Gray apart is that she strives to create paintings and collages that hint at commentary on social hierarchies, often in a bit of a flippant way.
An example of Gray’s unique style.
How that might play out in her work: Gray loves high-end fashion, and considers that an art in itself. She also became preoccupied with the gritty look of downtown Los Angeles, and the contrast between “real L.A.” and the fashion-conscious L.A. that we see on television. So her paintings might depict high-end brand outlets set in lived-in, gritty areas. In the series she’s working on for some upcoming shows, she’s tossing in her experience with advertising, too, repurposing vintage ads and rewriting the copy to poke at contemporary society.
Her strategy of reserving her best energy and personal passion for her art has brought her many opportunities. Her pieces have been included in many group exhibitions in the Los Angeles area, in Houston, Texas, where she and her husband grew up, and on the East Coast as well.
One of Gray’s most impressive accomplishments was the 2022 residency she won at Chateau d’Orquevaux, an international residency program for artists and writers in Orquevaux, Champagne-Ardenne, France. She did a cliff-dive into this residency and went to France without supplies or materials, intending to use only what she found when she got there. She parlayed that into earning her own wall during an exhibition at Hive Art Gallery in L.A., where she’s shown several times. In fact, “A piece I did at the residency sold in that show.”
She could be said to be an international artist, as residents leave behind one of their pieces in the gallery at Chateau d’Orquevaux as part of the program. However, her upcoming shows will cement that title as she will exhibit at two galleries in Japan in May: Nano Gallery in Osaka and Designfesta in Tokyo. Stateside, she has another showing at Hive to look forward to, as well as her first inclusion at FM Oakland in the fall. Her next goal is to be included in a Superfine Art Fair, which exhibits in New York City, San Francisco, Houston, Austin and Washington, D.C. (superfine.world).
Gray and her husband, an artist in his own right, landed in California after his career brought him to a print packaging plant in Ontario. “I’m about two years into mountain living,” she said, relocating to Running Springs from Wrightwood. A large reason why they chose Running Springs is that, when they first found their cozy, cabin-style house, “I wanted to make art in here.”
To learn more about Gray and her work, visit elisegray.com.
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