This event is part of a series – see below for details.January 10, 2025 10:00 a.m.
GRIT & POLISH, an exhibition of works by The Steel Yard's 2024-2025 Residents
Event Details
GRIT & POLISH is a month-long, group exhibition produced through a creative partnership between The Steel Yard and WaterFire Providence showcasing the work of 2024-2025 resident artists at The Steel Yard.
The residents from diverse backgrounds and perspectives weave many personal narratives into The Steel Yard’s storied community space through their multimedia explorations in ceramics, jewelry, and metals. They invite you into their journeys in progress as beginning, returning, year-long, and short-term residents, embracing what it means to be refined and unfinished. The exhibition features work by Traé Brooks, Katie Han, Nyala Honda, Dana Heng, Anne Pyne Irving, Prinshu Gautam, Kit Grindeland, and Alex Tum.
The exhibition is on view in the WaterFire Arts Center gallery from Thursday, January 9 through Sunday, February 9, 2025, with an opening reception on Thursday, January 9th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and an artist panel on Thursday, January 16th starting at 6:00 p.m. moderated by MJ Sanqui Residency Coordinator at The Steel Yard.
GRIT & POLISH showcases the work of The Steel Yard’s current resident artists in their first group exhibition. These artists bring diverse experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach to their mediums, revealing the depth and breadth of creativity nurtured in this year-long residency. By partnering with The Steel Yard, WaterFire Providence celebrates the vibrant artistic community of the Valley neighborhood and the Woonasquatucket River, highlighting the stories, skills, and artistry that shape our shared creative landscape.
The WaterFire Arts Center store + gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday*, 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. The exhibition is free and open to all, donations are encouraged.
The Resident Artists
Traé Brooks is a visual artist hailing from Windsor, CT, whose practice spans sculpture, painting, and the use of found materials. Graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in fine art from the University of Hartford in 2019, his work delves into the intricacies of personal identity and the ways individuals navigate history, memory, family, race, and trauma. Currently engaged in a year-long residency at The Steel Yard in Providence, RI, Brooks continues to explore artistic expression through welding and metal fabrication. Noteworthy solo exhibitions include showcases at DamNation at Real Art Ways (Hartford) and Open Mic Gallery (New Britain). Traé’s work has also been featured in group exhibitions at venues such as Albany Center Gallery (Albany, NY), Farmington Valley Arts Center (Avon, CT), and Widener Gallery at Trinity College (Hartford, CT). Beyond creating art, Brooks is actively involved in curatorial and organizational roles, having served as chairman of the Curatorial Committee at the Windsor Arts Center (Windsor, CT) and as a member/shop ambassador at MakerspaceCT (Hartford, CT). Currently, he also contributes to the arts community as a guard at the RISD Museum.
Katie Han is a Chinese American multidisciplinary artist whose work uses humans’ intimate relationship with cloth as a vehicle for exploring the origins and constant evolution of self-identity. Her practice is rooted in a desire to express, understand, and propose ways of being. Repetitive textile techniques like weaving and crochet allow for introspection and rumination, drawing on traditional acts of domestic labor as sites of processing and new understandings.
Nyala Honda is a Ceramic artist creating work that explores craft through the lens of genre painting. Inspired by mapping, scientific methodologies, and the concept of personal mythologies, she creates collage-like narratives that investigate how place, secrecy, and disjointedness assert themselves in our relationships and affect our sense of self. Through drawings of mechanisms, natural motifs, and text, Honda uses principles of craft and the implicit qualities of clay to express a sense of escapism, dissociation, and constructed reality based on her experiences growing up in the suburban south, and her identity as a mixed-race southern artist. Nyala received both her BFA in Ceramics and BFA in Art Education from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. She was awarded the CURO grant for Undergraduate Research in 2020 and has exhibited in shows such as Embodied Motion in Providence, Rhode Island, and SIPS: A Cup Show in Savannah, Georgia. She currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island where she is an artist in residence at The Steel Yard.
Dana Heng is an interdisciplinary visual artist and educator based in Providence, RI. She attended youth arts organizations, including New Urban Arts, AS220 Youth, and The Steel Yard, as a student during her years at Classical High School. While in college at the University of Vermont, she studied sociology and studio art, continuing to foster a creative and social practice that was instilled in her as a teen in the Providence youth arts scene. Upon returning to RI, Dana dove right back into the NUA community, where she is now employed as the Manager of Artist Mentors. Influenced and inspired by the people and philosophy at NUA, Dana’s practice outside of her day-job is often community-driven. She co-founded Binch Press in 2018, a member-based printshop centering queer and BIPOC artists. She co-organized the annual Queer/Trans Zinefest in Providence, which was a market for independent publishers and artists. In her personal creative practice, Dana makes work based on food culture and memory as it relates to identity and belonging. She was the recipient of the 2019 RISD Museum Artist Fellowship, 2021 Santa Fe Art Institute Labor Residency, 2022 Interlace Project Grant, 2024 Providence Commemoration Lab and has shown her work in galleries around Providence. She is currently serving on Providence’s Art in City Life Commission, a community board that advises the city’s administrators on public art projects. She is a collector of random skills and hobbies, driven by curiosity and a desire to learn and to share.
Anne Pyne Irving is an artist, jeweler, and metalsmith based in Providence, Rhode Island. Her work centers on an inquiry into change and transformation. Drawing on the symbolism of the Silk Moth’s life cycle, she creates tokens that speak to the poetics of change. Through Her work, Anne transforms an enduring state of flux into a tangible sensation.
Prinshu Gautam (he/him) is from Kathmandu, Nepal, and identifies as a trans-masculine individual. He graduated from Earlham College in May 2023 with a degree in Ceramics and Global Management. Prinshu received his training in ceramics as a thrower and continues to expand his practice in creating functional forms. Upon graduation,n he spent a year at Peter Pots as a production staff where he learned to slip cast and make plaster molds. He is currently a ceramics micro resident at The Steel Yard. To expand his practice Prinshu has been combining ceramics with body art by making interactive installations, and performance pieces. The conceptual basis for these works comes from Prinshu’s experience of being a genderqueer immigrant in the United States. His works continue to explore the tension between inherited and chosen identities.
Kit Grindeland (they/he) is a trans-self-taught ceramicist. They have been working with clay since 2021, and he’s thrilled to be a resident at the Steel Yard this year. Working with alternative firing methods such as pit firing, they explore the connections between natural elements and magical realism, the sweet and the bizarre. They have taught ceramics at Amherst College, Anyhow Studios, The Steelyard, and a wonderful backyard in Western Massachusetts. Their work has been a part of multiple shows at the WaterFire Arts Center, as well as the Providence Public Library and East Manning Projects. When not working with clay he is working on a clown/drag solo show, “Rasputin, LIVE!”. Follow them at @goblinhands on Instagram or at their website, kitgrindeland.com.
Alex Tum is an interdisciplinary sculptor based in Providence, RI. His work reflects a synthesis of cross-cultural perspectives, in which conventions of power dynamics, discipline, and repression are explored through large-scale sculptural forms. Alex holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in Sculpture from Rhode Island College. His work has been featured in several group shows and has received awards from the Warwick Center for the Arts and the Providence Art Club. Alex intends to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in the future.
About The Steel Yard
The Steel Yard is a Providence, RI-based non-profit industrial art center and non-traditional craft school that offers educational programs in blacksmithing, welding, jewelry, foundry, and ceramics. Outside of the classroom, artists can access the studios through open studio hours, rentals, and our residency programs. Residencies support emerging and mid-career artists, providing full access to our studios and equipment, with paid fellowships and other professional development opportunities.
In addition to studio access, The Steel Yard fabricates functional, design-driven public-art installed throughout Southeastern New England, through its Public Projects department. These decorative bike racks, trash cans, benches, and fences are found at businesses and main streets from Western Massachusetts to Block Island, with custom metal sculptures installed along waterways, parks, schools and public spaces across the region. The artists behind these public amenities include graduates of the Yard’s one-week paid welding workforce training program and artist apprentices.
Organizer
