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♪♪ [piano] ♪♪

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-My art and
my motivation for making my

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my art is about body
liberation,

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♪♪

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which to me means
attempting to create safety

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and belonging for everyone,
for all bodies.

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What I see my work
doing is making a space

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where we can acknowledge
the truth

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of human variation.

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My name is Grace Athena Flott.

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I'm a visual artist, primarily

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working in paint.

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I work mostly with oil
paint on canvas,

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and I also do
a bit of printmaking.

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So I went to University
of Washington.

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I was on a path to go into,
economic and labor policy.

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The thing that tipped me
towards art or returned me

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to it, was the major injury
that I experienced.

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When I was 20 years old,
I was on a study abroad

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program in Paris, France,

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and I was injured
in this apartment fire.

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I sustained injuries,
burn injuries

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over, like, half of my body
and also skeletal injuries.

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I was in recovery
in the hospital

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for two full months,
and part of that was in Paris.

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and then I was

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medically evacuated back

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to Harborview Medical Center
here in Seattle.

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An event
that just totally changed

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how I thought

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about myself
and how people perceived me.

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That experience
of like waking up in

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a different physical reality

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made me realize that
I didn't see

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any bodies like mine in media,

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and it turned me towards
this kind of like, search for,

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meaning and belonging.

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After I went to
the University of Washington,

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I then, like, went back
to school a few years later

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to learn to draw and paint
the figure in portrait.

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And that was at Gage
Academy of Art.

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So I studied for four years
and in an Atelier, 

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which is the French word
for workshop,

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and it's a type of education
modeled after

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the kind of 19th century
academic painters

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who would train students
in their studio.

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I was attracted to that
because it, to me, realism

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is a very powerful mode
of communication.

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This is an amazing,
storytelling tool.

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I got these technical chops.

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And then when I got out,
I realized that,

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you know, everything I learned
was amazing and so useful.

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And at the same time,
it was really rooted

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in a particular time period,
and a particular philosophy

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around what types of bodies
are worthy of being portrayed.

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Being me and

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knowing, like my friends
and my community of people

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who might have burn injuries
or just really anybody

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we don't really fit into,
like an idealized version.

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♪♪

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I think about my work as,
kind of broadening

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the image of what is normal
So I think a lot about

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whose body has value
in society.

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Who gets to belong?

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Who gets to decide?

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And what that looks like.

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So I started a project
called New Icons,

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and it's a collaborative
portrait project with people

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in my community with visible
scarring from burn injuries.

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And it started because

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I was looking
for my own visual history.

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and I just started talking to

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friends and I said,
I know how to paint people.

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And do you want to be
in a painting?

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I think that you are worthy
of being in a painting

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and people were interested.

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It just started with one
person and grew from there.

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I know that

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a few people that I
painted, it was the first time

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anyone even photographed them
since their injury.

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Many of us can relate to
feeling othered in some way.

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That doesn't have to be about,
even necessarily

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how you look.

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I recently had two paintings
acquired

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by the Port of Seattle

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to be displayed at
SeaTac International Airport.

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And it's two paintings
from the new Icons

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portrait project.

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portraiture is part

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of the storytelling piece
that I'm interested in.

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People are powerful
and they tell a story.

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Everyone's face tells a story.

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I'm interested really

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in the map
of the surface of the body

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and what that says
about someone's history

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and who they are.

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So someone one day

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to sent me this call for art.

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And it was to paint
the portrait of 

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Governor Jay Inslee.

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And I just thought, wow.

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Okay, well, I paint portraits,

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and I've lived in Washington
since I was four years old,

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east of the mountains
and west of the mountains,

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just like him.

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I applied and

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interviewed.
I met the governor.

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I met first lady Trudi Inslee.

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I met his team.

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Two weeks later,
we were doing a photo shoot.

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So it was very fast paced.

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Overall, like the process
really mirrored

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the way that I work
for most portrait commissions,

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which is we started
with like a big conversation

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about the vision.

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How do you want to be
portrayed?

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What's most important to you,

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in this case,
about your legacy?

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And then we take that
and go into the photo shoot,

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take 700 photos, and then I
select kind of the top images.

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And with Inslee,
what I did is a tiny

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or like a small digital
version of the big painting.

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And then I took the painting

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and took about seven weeks
start to finish.

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The painting was unveiled
in January

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2025 when he
left office when he retired.

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Huge unveiling at the
Capitol building in Olympia.

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Over 200 people were there.

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I could not have asked
for a better opportunity.

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To do the kind of work
that I have done

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being an artist,
we try so hard to get our work

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validated
in the public sphere.

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And that's
really meaningful to me.

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I was lucky enough
to get another commission,

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to paint the retired

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Washington State University
president, Kirk Schulz,

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and I just finished
the painting.

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It's about to be framed
and delivered.

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I'm in a kind of exploratory period.

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So this is the scar patttern 
enlarged with the screen print.

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I am starting to hit
on bringing in like, plants

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and nature more into the work.

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We see disfigurement
and disability

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quite often in nature.

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And I also see
my scar patterns,

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like the particular shapes
from my body replicated

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in cracked earth, in riverbeds, in tree bark.

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I just finished

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a painting called
“Washing with the Roots”.

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It's kind of an altar piece

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about healing
through a connection to water

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or your ancestors and place.

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The figure is printed
with these things

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I call scar prints, 

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by rolling ink on the skin

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and then pressing paper
and pulling a print.

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And the balsamroot is a plant
that is really meaningful to me.

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It not only grew everywhere 

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around where I'm from in 
Spokane,

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but it is really resistant
and resilient in a wildfire.

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And, as a burn survivor,
that means a lot to me.

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One thing
that's important to me

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to continue
working with the figure,

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as long as we have
a kind of body

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hierarchy in our world,
like the figure

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will continue to be political

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and really important.

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I feel like
I can speak the loudest

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about what
it means to go through a major

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change to one's body
and not only survive,

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but turn it into
something that is creative.

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And can
carry me into the future.

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♪♪