MARCH 5 - APRIL 17, 2024

Opening Reception with the Artist
Tuesday, March 5TH, 5 - 7 PM

SOCO Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of The Unswept Floor, a solo exhibition by artist Grace Stott featuring several new freestanding and wall mounted ceramics. The gallery will host a public opening reception with the artist on March 5th from 5 - 7 PM in SOCO Annex.  This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Stott’s ceramics and mixed-media installations are unmistakable. The artist creates hand built ceramic vessels and sculptures, incorporating painting and unique recurring forms – animals, cherubs, fruit, and the female body. The forms within each work interact in a puzzle-like form, where several different subjects are meshed together, such as women dancing, cats in a cradle, and fruit in a bowl. Her creative process results in strikingly creative ceramic works, which act as a handheld look into the artist’s personal inspiration. 

For The Unswept Floor, Stott will present large scale vessels as well as wall hanging tile-based works. The artist speaks of her artistry as an opportunity to elevate the everyday, where “bright colors and pop imagery atop earthy wares weave together a dream world.” An installation of the ceramics will play throughout SOCO’s Annex floor onto the wall for an interplay of everyday objects – a sock, a toothbrush, a strawberry in bright and uniquely shaped ceramic forms.  A  round ceramic “dustball” includes keys, sunglasses, a pacifier, memorializing  and elevating the symbols around her and in her life. 

The title of the exhibition and the included works are based on the “unswept floor'' mosaics of ancient Rome - which include debris of feasts, formed on the floors of triclinium, ancient dining rooms where guests lounged. The “unswept floor” mosaics act as trompe l’oeils of the remains dropped under the revelers’ couches — fruit, shells, bones, and fish heads. Stott’s interpretation of this tradition includes everyday items from her life as a mom, a caretaker of people and animals. Unlike the ancient Roman mosaics, these objects are real beyond perception, where a distinct use of texture juxtaposes the wall’s smooth painting.

Grace Stott (B. 1990)

Grace Stott (b. 1990, Princeton, NJ, she/her) is a graduate of Tufts University and SMFA with additional educational experience at CalArts. She has shown in numerous galleries and art spaces around the United States, including Dinner Gallery and Mrs., New York, NY; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Chefas Projects, Portland, OR; and Fuller Rosen Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. Grace was a 2017 artist-in-residence at Bunker Projects in Pittsburgh, PA, and is an active member of the Goodyear Arts Collective, an artist-led non-profit residency in Charlotte, NC. She was voted Best Sculptor for Queen City Nerve's Best in the Nest 2023 and won a BOB Award for “Artist to Watch” in 2017 through Charlotte Magazine. She has organized curatorial and community projects in conjunction with her studio practice and her work is in various public art installations around Charlotte.