Artist statement | Grace Miceli

I’ve been using the Internet ever since I was 12. I started using AIM (AOL InstantMessenger) and looking up song lyrics and making a website for my middle school band before we even had any music. It's just sort of this extension of reality that I've always felt comforted by and maybe powerful when using as a tool.

At the moment I find myself using the Internet as my main social sphere, hanging out with the friends I wish I had by tweeting at celebrities like Rumer Willis (who never responds) and talking to my peers on Tumblr, which is a blogging platform. The interface of the web has allowed for a really fun and active extension of IRL (in real life) personalities and the possibility of endless interactions. The combination of constant Internet access and my interest in a more traditional art history (including performance artists like Andrea Fraser and Kalup Linzy) brought me to start working the way that I currently am. I'm the kind of person who is alway saying “This reminds me of this” in reference to music or TV shows or movies.

As I got more confident, I found myself wanting to embrace that bratty young fun girl who is proud that she spends 10 hours a day on the Internet because she wants to. I’ve always wanted to be a stand up comedian, but I have mega stage fright and performance anxiety. So I do this instead. My paintings aren’t inspired by the Internet only in terms of content, but also in terms of process. I do most of them in one sitting. It’s extremely unsatisfying for me to have to spend several days on a piece, because I am way more interested in being prolific than mastering any one particular skill or craft. I sell my work by posting it on Tumblr; I’m not sure that I can see my work being sold in a gallery in the form that it currently exists. I look forward to the reaction that my paintings receive online, and I can’t help but feel an obligation to my audience to constantly and instantly gratify by posting new work everyday. I’m really happy when there is a response to the work, even if it’s from teen girls, who make up a lot of my followers. Young women deserve access to art more so than rich collectors (imho—in my humble opinion), so I find the Internet to be a really fitting site for both influence and display of my work.

For more, see:  partywitch.tumblr.com