Stacey Hardy
About the Artist
Stacey spent her childhood in the Mississippi Delta. She grew up playing in cotton trailers, making mud forts, and riding horses. Art was her path. She studied painting, drawing, and photography before discovering the magic of clay. “Deep red, gritty, forgiving terra cotta is the clay body that feels like home to me, familiar and ancient all at once.”
Her work is a nod towards storytelling, an embrace of the vernacular, rich history, and landscape of the Deep South. She works intuitively and is influenced by Art Brut and outsider artists of the world. She is interested in creating layered, painterly surfaces filled with marks and small moments of botanical and cosmic references. Her work can be read and explored, like pages in a book, a map.
Stacey holds an MFA in ceramic sculpture from The University of Georgia and a BFA from Loyola University. She is a two time recipient of a Mississippi Arts Commission artist fellowship and was recently designated by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters as the 2020 Visual Arts Award winner. Stacey’s work is exhibited throughout the United States.
“I am immersed in the process, the tactile experience, the exploration.”
