Grace Gonia (they/them) is a white, queer, nonbinary, chronically ill Chicagoland area local. After earning a B.A. in Psychology from Seattle University, Grace began their journey into ceramics and memory care. They found their passion in working with older adults as a Life Enrichment Coordinator and Director. In an effort to combine their passions for art making, memory care, and communal, inter-generational healing, Grace returned to their lifelong love of learning at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in the M.A. in Art Therapy and Counseling program.
In their work with adults with IDD at Envision Unlimited Westtown Center, Grace re-established the Westtown Ceramics Studio. Collaboration with Access Living’s Art Tour Guide Job Training Program reinforced their ongoing commitment to providing anti-ableist art therapy. In their current work at Central Baptist Village, Grace strives to serve both the person before them, as well as the community at large.
Vase Trio, 2025, English Porcelain, 3 x 3 in.
Handcarved texture on three wheelthrown porcelain bud vases
Untitled, 2025, Embroidery on Fabric, 6 x 8 in.
Geometric and freeflowing lines of embroidery on rainbow woven fabric
Jar Trio, 2025, White Stoneware, 3 x 3 in.
Three lidded jars made from closed forms in white stoneware
Whitetailed Deer, 2025, Embroidery on Fabric, 12 x 12 in.
Embroidery of whitetailed deer on fabric
the hope I had in, 2025, Embroidery on Fabric, 18 x 18 in.
Embroidery on indigo dyed fabric
My work, both as a human person, and as an art therapist, involves translation, detangling, reassembling, reusing, revisiting, re-envisioning.
The collection of art pieces before you are a snapshot into my art making process, and a smaller window into my mind. In formal terms, this research has investigated how materials and their processes support my self-reflexive practice. These words don’t do justice to the time, energy, emotion, and so much else that has gone into these works.
Through the process of accepting my self as a chronically ill person, I’ve become more deeply rooted to my body, mind, and spirit. Relying on nature as the basis of my spirituality has grounded me in the explorations of my faith. A lifelong lover of words, I’ve always sought to investigate, understand, contemplate, rinse and repeat. These art pieces you see here are a visual representation of the relentless strings of words rushing through my head at all times.
This work navigates visibility, self-disclosure, and the inevitability of disability. Yet rather than despairing, this thought is somewhat comforting. Oh, what a privilege it is to age.
Through intentionally creating art to self-reflect and express, I began to develop a sense of intuition; as an emerging art therapist, as well as a person. This led me tumbling into insight, revisiting moments in a new light. This work was created in the process of reflection on my clinical fieldwork as an emerging art therapist. Yet contained within it are an entire lifetime of moments.
The moments that stick with us. Taking the time to write my mind the way I want it to read.