Grace Edwards ( she/her )

My artistic practice uses the body and sugary sweets as tools for bridging sensory experiences across time, highlighting the opportunity for joy in the ephemeral. I’m interested in creating an archive that emphasizes the act of searching for and cultivating joy through the collaboration of past and present. Forms within the work are found through engaging with a past moment through my body; looking at what sensations arise, where they are located, and where they propel energetically throughout my range of motion, or kinesphere. The act of returning to a moment allows for the comfort of nostalgia amongst fabrications that are new—bridging the gap of then and now. This is explored in a systemic way, breaking down the memory into parts that are filtered through structures of chance—allowing an entire body of work to be formed through excavating one moment. It’s through grief I find comfort in this return, creating a circular sense of time within my studio space. 

The temporality of life pushes me to indulge in all the earthly pleasures living has to offer: the delight of biting into a sweet treat, the beauty in being able to get lost in the movement of your own body, the feeling of being completely enveloped in a color, and the flutter in your heart when you’re surrounded by abundance. All these moments, grounded by their presence in the body, are what I value most in life and therefore my work. This sweetening of my practice emerged from a fascination with cakes—fleeting objects crafted with care for the sole purpose of joy. This sparked an investigation into reimagining desserts as glazes, discovering profound connections between molten sugar and glaze's silica surface. 

My work celebrates indulgence through material abundance rather than surface decoration. Instead of ornamental glazing, I infuse glaze throughout the entire making process using very fluid materials and granular glaze sprinkles that result in translucent forms that appear edible. Crafting sculptures from “structural” glazes also allows the form to reflect the works inherent fluidity—altering with firing and functioning as my collaborator throughout the making process. I ground my practice in things that are traditionally considered decorative, such as glazing and frosting. While these are finishing touch adornments, I also see them as signs of love. These extras notions show a sense of time, referencing the life of an object through an act of care. Staying bonded with the body, I’m interested in the freedom that comes from abandoning the vessel. Lines can arc and twist throughout space ornamenting their pathways as they progress. The forms burst with celebration and abundance while referencing the love and care of their origins.

Grace Edwards is a ceramic artist from Iowa, whose work explores the inherent sweetness of life by pulling from sensory experiences across time. She graduated with a BFA in Ceramics and BA in Dance from the University of Iowa and is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Arkansas. Her work utilizes ceramic materials in unconventional ways, with her lifelong move practice a constant influence. In 2025 she was a recipient of the Sturgis International Fellowship, conducting material and pastry research in France, Sweden, Denmark, and China. Her work has been exhibited nationally, and well as internationally in Jingdezhen, China.