About the Artist

The Artist’s Practice

Michelle Grimm approaches clay just as the generations before us did: with an insatiable curiosity and an innate desire to experiment. She shapes the clay with her hands, slowly and intentionally, hopeful it will cooperate with her vision. She plays with myriad glazing and firing techniques, sometimes incorporating other organic materials, researching culture, history, or science alongside every experiment (you’d be amazed by what you can find in a library book). Rule number one: be patient. Rule number two: surrender to the unexpected. With Michelle’s artist conditions in relationship with the wild elements, they create forms that are at once unruly and graceful, modern and primitive, each an original. Michelle’s pieces are for function and art in residential, hospitality, and commercial spaces. They are an evocative everyday reminder of our entanglement with things wild and ancient.

The Artist’s Background

Michelle began her relationship with the elements while in another career. During her time as an interior and spatial designer, she explored materiality and form as they relate to an experience. This exploration gave rise to large- and small-scale spaces for hospitality and retail projects in Canada and Australia. Although she loved that creative period of life, clay became a stronger, more primal pull, and she is now wholly dedicated to her ceramics practice.

Michelle Grimm