RIMA GRAD

ARTIST STATEMENT:

There was a time, from the late 1950’s until the late 1990’s, when you would rarely see my father without a camera. His penchant for recording our everyday life was part of the phenomenon known as vernacular photography, snapshots of everyday life. It seems only fitting that photography would be a basis for my work, whether I am painting from a photograph, using photographic fragments as collage material, or interacting with the selfie as a vehicle for self-portraiture.

In my current body of work, I am using the actual photograph as the substrate. Many are family photos, culled from the trove that my father left behind, and some are of strangers. In both cases I am observing a window to the past and an inexplicable narrative. When I spend time with these images, I am seduced by nostalgia for a time that no longer exists and I am fascinated by the before and after that is inherent in every photograph. How was the photograph posed? Why was that choice made in that moment in time and who made the decision? What did we go back to once the moment was captured? There is a family dynamic that I am trying to decipher. What do these family groupings say about memory and loss? Through digital or embroidered interventions, I create my own story, questioning what the photograph is telling me and altering the photograph to fit a new narrative

Bio:

Rima Grad makes work that deals with personal narrative, through painting, collage, and altered vernacular photography. She was born in New York City and received her BFA with a concentration in Etching in 1975 from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Rima received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2017. The forty-year gap was spent working in Graphic Design, raising a family, and acting as a caregiver. And always making art. Rima lives in Manhattan and has a home studio. She has participated in solo, group, and juried exhibitions throughout New York City, Westchester County, and Connecticut. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Journal News, and other local and regional publications and is included in many private and corporate collections. She has Instagram and Twitter accounts, an artist’s page on Facebook, and is a member of New York Artist’s Equity, The Crit Lab, and Art Lives Here.