Miles Gracey uses the vocabulary of furniture to translate sculptural forms by activating a once-passive relationship with the participant. Functionally, his furniture attempts to refocus attention on craftsmanship within sculpture, while conceptually undermining the art form’s functional and practical concerns. Gracey describes his work as playful and curious, prompting a participant to suspend their beliefs as it reveals or obfuscates their perspective or relationship with it. One of the artist’s driving forces is his weariness of standing behind ribbons to view art, not being able to touch or taste what he is looking at. Informed by this feeling, his work is concerned with all the senses: touch, smell, sound, and even taste are at the forefront of his practice.
Gracey grew up in California, where he received an MFA in “Sculpture New Genre” from Otis College of Art and Design. He fell into the cabinet-making trade and eventually attended The Krenov School of Fine Woodworking. He has attended residencies at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and was recently a fellow at The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Maine. His work has been exhibited in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
To learn more about Miles Gracey’s work, visit his Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/plays.on.woods/
