Seattle-based artist Lily Gray creates ceramic and glass artworks that serve as a reflection of her upbringing and personal experiences.

by Jake Isom

A waffle is created on the pavement as the Saturday sun casts through a chain-link fence; the barrier between reality and a world of abstract expression.

The shoes of artist Lily Gray crack against the gravel as she strides toward the weathered metal doors of the Inscape Arts and Cultural Center. Her smile is as bright as the oranges on her sweater.

Lily creates ceramic and glass artwork that serve as a reflection of her upbringing. Lily shares on her website that her newly crafted stories are deeply rooted in Hong Kong and her mixed first-generation experiences.

“I think about family history a lot and how that relates to my own story,” Lily says.

Her father met her mother while stationed on a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine outside of Hong Kong. Once Lily was born, her family moved to Tri-Cities, Washington.

“Growing up being Asian in the Tri-Cities was a really interesting experience,” Lily says. “Being assimilated, but not fully assimilated, like trying to blend in.”

Lily and her family found their own small version of Hong Kong in the Tri-Cities.

“We always had to make our own culture; even though there weren’t that many people, especially from Hong Kong or who spoke Cantonese, my mom was always connecting us to those people,” Lily says.

The Gray household is always filled with different plants. Lily explains that her family has a bustling garden in which they would use the food to heal and nourish their bodies.

“My dad and I would always go out into the forest and, ever since I was a little kid, that was just the playground,” Lily says. “When I would think about feeling some type of transformation for myself, it was always in nature.”

Lily’s art studio confirms this. The space drowns in sunlight. Each piece of artwork and clay dusted tool is kissed by Apollo.

Enormous windows create a portal, allowing the light to beam onto two particularly captivating works. A pair of sculpted breathing respirators with flowers blooming from the air filters. Strings dangle from the masks’ edges, seeming as though they can be adorned.

The pieces are titled “Flower Respirator” and “Tulip Variant Respirator,” both intricately sculpted of porcelain.

The first rendition of this collection, Flower Respirator, originated in 2020. At the end of summer that year, many people in Eastern Washington donned respirators, as it was considered dangerous to be outside without one due to the poor air quality generated by wildfires raging throughout the west coast. That, and the necessity of masks to combat the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“In response to that, I chose peonies and made the respirator as a way for us to filter out all of the bad and have some other type of rejuvenation or rehabilitation,” Lilys says.

Lily delves deeper on her website, explaining that this piece is sculpted from porcelain to convey the fragility of the material as a metaphor for the delicacy of our relationship to our physical and social environment.

In each peony’s petal is the imprint of Lily’s palms, as human touch is needed in the process of reconstruction and symbiosis of nature.

The adjacent flower respirator is similar to the first, however this mask’s air filters have tulips protruding from them rather than peonies. The tulips on the mask are white with streaks of red, reminiscent of a college student’s eyes during finals week.

Lily raises her arms and begins to tie the porcelain respirator around her head.

“The reason I picked tulips is because of this, almost a playbook from the 1600s,” Lily says.

During the 1600s, Sempura Augustus tulip bulbs were a highly sought-after bulb that had been affected by the breaking tulip virus or lily streak virus. The disease causes tulip bulbs afflicted by the virus to wither much faster than the unaffected.

“Over the past two years, we’ve seen how different billionaires have clearly demonstrated they don’t care about anyone else, are just taking what they can and have benefitted from the effects of the pandemic,” Lily says.

She further explains that the decision to use tulips is an allusion to Dutch tulip mania and the market collapse it created, connecting the pursuit of synthetic profit by modern billionaires and 16th-century oligarchs.

Nature and human beings’ relationship with it remain a cornerstone of Lily’s work.

Similar to how nature continues to inspire Lily’s work, clay and ceramics also remain constant.

Lily utilizes ceramics and glass as metaphors for duality, fragility, commodity and fluidity. This allows her an outlet to navigate through the questions of her identity and our place in the world.

“I am constantly rethinking where I belong and how fluid, fragile and permeable my sense of identity is,” Lily writes on her website.

As her fingers glide along with the clay, she is able to think through her ideas and solidify the reasons behind why she is working on certain creations.

“The material itself is actually really therapeutic,” Lily says.

When she takes the time to make something by hand, Lily is forced to slow down and deeply consider how many times her hands touch during the process. This is representative of all of the love she is putting into these delicate works.

Many of Lily’s creations are abstract, wearable pieces that compel viewers to question society and their place in the contemporary world. These insightful works share shelf space with a wide variety of colorful cups, mugs and vessels.

Some mugs have illustrations of fruits, carefully glazed on the outside. Others have miniature calligraphy paintings of flower arrangements from the Qing Dynasty. Next to these lay a collection of white, bulbous mugs — Lily’s cloud cup collection.

One piece in this assortment is especially striking. The cup titled “Red Dragon Cloud” has a familiar white, bulbous body, however, it has a bright orange and red dragon streaking through the middle of the cup. The dragon’s tail winds around to form a handle, while its head stares back at the person who happens to be sipping.

The cup is inspired by Chinese calligraphy ink wash paintings of clouds, mist and the dragon of the South China Sea,

Lily explains that much of her inspiration to make functional ware, use Chinese aesthetics and motifs and make objects out of porcelain stem, from her connection to her maternal grandfather. Though he passed before Lily was born, he left behind a trove of teapots, reliquaries and antiques in an ornate wooden cabinet. Some pieces are over 100 years old.

“That’s contributed heavily to my tastes and aesthetic, but also with [creating] functional ware,” Lily says.

She explains further that functional ware is especially interesting to her because over the course of hundreds, if not thousands, of years, people have been honing their abilities to discover what goes into making certain experiences, like drinking tea, so enjoyable.

Lily removes a plastic tub covered in dried clay and spilled glaze from a nearby shelf. “Each tool used to create a piece of functional ware has a specific role and purpose, "she says. She retrieves a tiny, battered piece of plastic from the tub.

“When I’m making something on the pottery wheel, I use this to smooth out the rims so it has a really soft, buttery and clean feel. So, when you drink from your piece, you have a really pleasant experience,” she says.

This same piece of plastic has been with Lily on her journey for six years.

Lily conjures the thought of how many thousands of times someone will drink from the same glass in their lifetime.

“What would happen if that one object brought you some indescribable amount of joy every time you use it?” she asks. “I think that that’s so exciting.”

Going forward, Lily plans to persist in the creation of abstract sculptural works and functional pieces alike. She also hopes to continue her exploration of her Chinese background within a Western context and what that looks like.

“Everything that you touch to [a piece] becomes part of that object’s memory and story, so how can I take some of those ideas and transform them into something that’s more meaningful?” Lily asks.

Click here to watch Isom’s video about Lily Gray and her art