Esther Gray
All history is relative, and no item is too mundane. These are just a few things that we can learn from Esther’s pieces which were used for our Ordinary Time II and Mercy Movement worship guide covers. Esther is a very methodic artist who has the ability to use any item at her disposal when making her art. In fact, she prefers it. Keep reading to learn more.
Where are you from? How did you get here—Indianapolis and Redeemer? And how does that affect your work?
Well, I’m from Indiana. For the longest time, I wanted to get out of Indy, and that’s a major life goal that still hasn’t happened. I don’t know if it ever will. Part of that is my interest in missions.
My art practice has been going on since the beginning, for the most part. I mean, I’ve had a lot of interests in my life. So it’s hard to say, “Oh, it was the only one.” I had way too many. I still do.
My parents and teachers always encouraged me to go forward with art. At the beginning of my life, it was more like portraits. I really liked drawing faces. That was my main obsession. Through high school and into college, faces were the best thing to draw and paint. I eventually lost interest in subjective matter, but I may return to it. I’m sure I will probably.
I am the oldest of four girls, so most of my life was in community, which is the main focus of my art. I’m not an introvert at all. I feel like many artists are, and I am the opposite of that. I think of art more in terms of call and response, like a conversation that changes how I think about art. At the end of the day, I have always been really serious about my faith, so that has also shaped the kind of art I wanted to make and the kind of schools I wanted to go to. It was exciting to go to Indiana Wesleyan because it gave me opportunities to think about art theologically instead of just as art. And that changed a lot of things for me.
I went to Indiana Wesleyan for painting. I eventually got my Master’s there in biblical and theological studies. I finished my undergrad during the peak of COVID—in 2020—so that last month was completely online and off campus. That was a tough time, and I wasn’t sure why I was still in my Master’s because it was hard to like to do anything. I was just very grief-stricken and still living at home. There was a lot of stuff going on, and I had no plans after graduation. When I finished my Master’s thesis, I was just like, I don’t know what to do with my life. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I texted my cousin and said, “Hey, would you be interested in me living in your spare bedroom?” And she said, “Sure.” So that’s how I got to Indy. Then, a friend told me about Redeemer, and interestingly enough, I remembered that I’d been to this church before on a tour. I went to the Harrison Center on a tour with our class. At that time, I had thought that it’d be cool if I could go. So, I guess the rest is history regarding getting to Redeemer.
What’s your Master’s in?
Biblical theological studies. I technically was double major for a bit in painting, and that.
How would you describe your work and practice? How has your work been described?
I feel like it’s constantly changing. Since my Master’s, I’ve shifted to more thinking with materials instead of thinking at materials. So, a lot of my work is externalizing thought. Regarding the style, I like details, patterns, and anything that provokes thought. I want to experience things deeply or not at all.
As far as how people think about my work, it depends on the person. I’ve been told by several people in my family that they actually like my abstract work, even though they don’t like anyone else’s. I grew up with many people who didn’t think abstract art was worth anything. I have a cousin and he thinks that impressionism is the only way to go, and I’m so over that. I don’t hate the impressionists. But yeah, come on.
I like diversity. If you look at all the people God created, how could you not like diversity in some form or fashion? God is so infinite. There are so many ways to speak of him. Why would we only use one language to communicate through art?
What are other ways your Master’s has influenced your art?
I think it has influenced the concepts behind my work and what I’m working through when I make my work. Why even make my work? I have noticed that I'm not making art if I’m not learning something. I feel like anytime I’m in school, or learning, or any like that, I make better art or have better ideas for the art. I think it’s because I’m constantly rethinking things. I always like to go back and think about how it could be totally different if I were to approach it in another direction or another way. I believe my Master’s continued solidifying my core interest in history, and church history was one of those things.
I think history is always gonna have something to do with my art. I like the idea of memory and how it shapes us. And I’m also afraid of memory, too. It’s scary how we forget many things. There are so many things that we don’t know about the past that we actually can’t adequately recreate it with the articles that are left.
I’m always wrestling with how I view my past and how that shapes my present. And if I’m in a good headspace, how I think about it versus a bad headspace, and how I interpret things based on how I’ve been interpreting my past. My show was about the interconnectedness of everything and how our past matters so much. All the things we’ve inherited matter so much to us.
I want to have good theology when making art, and something I did with my show was start creating in a way that actually rejuvenates me spiritually rather than depletes me. I’m always thinking about how we’re moving forward in Christianity and whether or not that bodes well for us. I don’t want to say that in a way that sounds like I’m devoid of the Holy Spirit, but in a sense, we are very responsible for our actions to move it forward.
Can you tell us about the two pieces from your show used as bulletin covers for Ordinary Time and Mercy Month?
Both of these pieces explored how a visual language created by one pattern could be mirrored or translated into a response in a more sculptural sense. I would take something, some characteristic of the pattern, and then translate it to a three-dimensional rhythm that mimicked the original pattern but in “another language,” as I often would put it. In some ways, it mirrored the way that I had been pondering how generations received and engaged with traditions they inherited from previous generations. The first pattern or fabric often acted as the backdrop or basic assumptions and traditions as a young person that you then choose how to respond to whether in outright rebellion, complete adoption, or as is more often the case, a kind of combination of rejections and adoptions. I wanted to highlight the fact that we do not act first in our existence and that there is so much that makes us who we are that has been given. The differences that distinguish us are simply the ways that we engage with that which we have received.
Saturn 1: Call is certainly playing into these themes. I wanted to respond to the pattern in a way that both honored and subverted the given pattern of the shirt I started with. I wanted the straight and sterile lines, which reminded me of Saturn’s rings, to become more organic and loose, as if they were breaking out of their paths. This first piece was part of a diptych, which was meant to highlight two different ways that one could respond to the same pattern. The first or Saturn 1: Call was minimalist in that I didn’t add other fabric to confuse the original pattern but the second took another pattern and sought to imitate the patterned fabric found on Saturn 1: Call by making it more rigid in its layout rather than swirling and less structured.
A Dance was meant to allude to visual movement that could be found both in each part which made the whole of the piece as well as the ensemble together. Each piece of the whole sang a song, which was a translation of the black and white patterned fabric wrapped around the branch but in increasingly more minimalist and sculptural ways. Each reduces the pattern to a more basic element than the last until it is a solitary blue circle. There exists a United diversity between the three elements because the shared starting point holds them together as a conversation.
The mood board in your studio shows that you take a lot of inspiration from nature, repetitive patterns, family, religion, and history. Of those things, what inspires you the most and why? Of those things, which do you find the most in your art?
History inspires me the most. I feel like all these things can be wrapped into each other a little bit; I have a hard time drawing distinct lines between my obsessions. I think a lot about not just my personal history but where I am in history and how that affects who I am. I am reading a book on the Reformation and want to better understand the moment in history. I’m just always doing that. I want to give an honest reflection of how I feel about where we are and where we’ve been. I think a lot of my work tends to be about that in some small way. In my show, I was thinking a lot about my personal history because I don’t believe in individuals in the Western sense. I don’t think we are these little islands that create meaning for ourselves. Most things I do are because of other people, and the same goes for them, right? We are who we are in a relationship. Our labels are all about comparing.
We see by comparison; we don’t see by you alone, right? And that’s why God is so hard to understand because there is no comparison; we can’t compare him to anything else, so it’s difficult to talk about him. Individualism has been something I don’t think is helping us or makes sense. After 2020, half of me died. We cannot recreate [something that was lost.] There is a sense in which we are unique, but we are a unique intersection of other persons and connections. I guess individuals exist, but not in the way they are so separate from each other.
I find a lot of patterns in my art. I keep coming back to them. They inspire me. I think they help get the point across that we don’t come from a blank slate. That has been why I’ve started gravitating more and more towards patterns. I don’t want to start with a blank slate, white canvas. That has plenty of loaded meaning. It’s so ingrained in us that that’s how you should start, and I want to rebel against it. So, by taking something that already exists, I am living out more honestly what our world is. It’s anything but a clean slate; it’s always a hand-me-down world. And we can do what we want with the hand-me-downs. But we can’t get rid of them all together. Usually, we have to respond to them. We have to engage with them.
Are there other inspirations that didn’t make the list?
I love the decorative arts, too. I want to rebel against everything that is white and clean lines. The way you feel in a room matters. And it shapes the way you think, too. I love churches for that reason.
Christian theology, Christian thought, Christian culture. Anything that we’ve collected over time, I love thinking about the ways that I would be so different from a Christian in the fourth century, or maybe the Middle Ages, and how that would shape all their assumptions. I love trying to picture what it’d be like to be a person in that time. I love those mind trips.
So, there are a lot of objects found in your work, from scraps of fabric to clothing to sticks, wires, actual nutshells, and more. In your opinion, how can people see the things around them point to God’s presence in their lives or even the beauty that he creates?
You have to spend time with things. You lose many opportunities if you don’t spend time with things. I found that the times that I am spiritually not present or frazzled are because I’m not spending enough time with things. It's simple, really. It could be a thought, but it could also be being outside or just not listening to anything, like having blank space. Blank space that you can use for anything. It doesn’t need to be productive or efficient; you’re not doing anything. That’s something I learned from someone’s spiritual formation content. Something that was helpful for his spiritual growth was when one of his mentors had him go out to a field for a whole day and not do anything, sitting there without even walking around. Not even thinking about anything, either. I feel like we don’t put enough value on pausing. If you don’t have that, you will never get this other aspect of noticing the small things. The little objects and how they might help you think about God or draw close to Him. All those little opportunities are always there, but you’re never giving enough time to take advantage of them. Pay attention to the things that you notice. What are the things you gravitate towards? What are the things that you watch for? Do you realize that you look at leaves all of a sudden, and you start noticing the differences in the shapes or the colors? Being more aware of how you experience your world often opens you up to the possibility of God meeting you in those places. That you are choosing to have more intimacy with Him because he’s always there to be found.
So those are the things I also have to keep in mind. If I don’t spend time, I can’t acknowledge the beauty in our world. I can’t be baptized by it. I’m alive. But what’s the point of being alive? Adulthood can feel like a task, a chore. I think that monotony can actually kill that joy, but you can also take that monotony and make it work for you. I think noticing what you’re gravitating towards is crucial because God can speak through those things. I’ve noticed many times he has for me. But that doesn’t have to be just visually. You can pick up an object and feel it. So that’s also an aspect that allows people to experience God through all their senses.
Do you have any upcoming projects or shows?
I have two projects for the church. One of them is for Advent. I’m working on it with Katie Ito and my roommate Kyrie Lewis. I’m excited about it, but I’m also nervous about it. I’ve collaborated with other artists before, and it’s been tough. But it might be a really great thing because I can build good foundations for next time.
So we’re creating a piece to go behind the band or on that wall above. Or both? I don’t know. We have a ceramicist, a figural painter, and an abstract painter. It’s gonna be really interesting. What I’m basically going to do is be a midwife for this. I want it to be good, not because I’m represented, but because it speaks to people and is appropriate for the occasion.
I’ve been really inspired by Joseph Cornell’s boxes and surrealism. He made a lot of very whimsical boxes. They are like a modern collage. I like that there’s a perceived narrative bit with each of the boxes. So, for me, things are trending towards more like collections as art.
I also have an assignment to produce art for one of the church’s classrooms that doesn’t have any art in there.
Do you have anything you want to add?
For other people who might consider themselves creative but don’t want to consider themselves an artist. Or are you feeling insecure about that title or doing the work? I want to leave them with this:
Try to find people that are actually interested in the things you are interested in.
Don’t judge yourself based on any of these other people.
Remember that the people we remember were based on accidental stuff in history.
Don’t think you have to be a different person to succeed or make work that matters to you.
Don’t make work that you don’t believe in.
If you don’t choose to be a full-time artist, then good. Please don’t do it. What’s the point of making stuff if it’s just for someone else? At the end of the day, if it’s trying to create an imaginary self that you don’t even want to identify with, don’t do it. You can work at a grocery store like I do and do art on the side. Create things that actually make you alive, not just other people. If you benefit from it, do the work, even if no one else likes it. And it’s okay that not everyone will. If you don’t want to cultivate a particular lifestyle, then it’s not really important to be known by that many people because some are extremely unhappy. So, just shoot for what you actually care about. Try to be the person you want to be, not the person you think others want you to be.
