Doria Grace's "The Great Deluge" Explores the Fragility of Our Planet

Florida and Okaloosa County native Doria Grace received her Associate of Arts degree from Okaloosa-Walton Community College (now Northwest Florida State College), where she graduated with high honors during her high school years. She was awarded a Fine Arts Scholarship in 2001-02, won second place in the college’s annual juried show at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center, and nabbed an award for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Arts in 2001.

Grace left for Montreal in 2002 to complete her Bachelor of Arts at Concordia University, graduating with distinction in 2005. She was co-director and chair of the Concordia’s Gallerie VAV Gallery for two years, and her work was shown extensively throughout Montreal.

In 2005, the artist moved to Boston and worked as an art instructor for children, art director for the BAAK Gallery in Harvard Square, and graphic designer for Simmons University.

“I moved back to Florida and Fort Walton Beach in February 2009 to take the job as curator and director of Full Circle Gallery where I also taught art classes to both adults and children,” says Grace. She then worked for Arriaga Originals Art Gallery on Scenic Highway 30-A, handling the promotion of artists.

From May 29 through June 22, Grace’s environmental commentary and solo art exhibition “The Great Deluge” will be on display at Full Circle Gallery. A reception will be held May 29 from 6 to 9 p.m.

The exhibition was inspired by a decade’s worth of Grace’s personal “dream-imagery.” Her exploration intensified during her time in Montreal. Grace’s displacement from her homeland’s tropical waters prompted her to investigate the significance of water’s recurring imagery in her work. During the seven years she spent in the snow and ice of the northeast, Grace began digging deep into the dreams and memories of her lifelong engagement with large bodies of water.

For Grace, the ancient element of water signifies and embodies all that is hidden behind the veil of consciousness, and in which she explores that which lies beneath the surface. Over the past few years, Grace has moved on to look at water as a signifier on a more global scale. Her research has taken her into ancient “deluge” (or flood) mythologies that can be traced back to every culture, from Judeo-Christian to American Indian. Scientists say those stories originated at the end of the Ice Age, when glaciers across the world began to melt, displacing villages and tribes in their wake. These stories resonate with Grace at this particular point in time due to the melting of our modern day ice caps.

“The Great Deluge,” her fourth solo show, demands awareness while investigating the theoretical and imagined impact that the melted water from our ice caps would have upon our coast lines and major cities throughout the world. Grace began planning this exhibition long before news of the oil spill hit the Gulf Coast, and it seems sadly appropriate that the reception will take place along the community’s efforts to save our wildlife and our waters. She hopes this show will be an arena for community dialogue as well as a place to gather in reverence to the fragility of our planet.

There will also be an ice sculpture installation made specifically for the gallery reception on May 29. “It is a block of ice 18 square inches that will contain a globe (whose) shorelines have been blacked out to represent the theoretical or imagined impact the melting of the ice caps would have on our planet,” says Grace. “The globe and block of ice will be hanging from the ceiling of the gallery and will melt onto a pool of water which will contain little clay houses on an island surrounded by a moat. Over the course of the reception the houses will slowly be submerged under water.”

Photo of Doria Grace by Jas Thomas, www.photosbyjas.com