Artist on the Rise: Gracie Korstjens

Tapping into the inner-workings of an artist and their process can be a tangled web. But when it comes to the repertoire of recent Augustana University graduate Gracie Korstjens, it’s what’s inside that’s often in clear view. A passionate creator with a penchant for both visual arts and biology, her work is an exploration of that very intersection.

Gracie Korstjens

“I have a background in biology and art, and I've really run with that,” Korstjens said. “A lot of my work is dealing with themes of identity and biological cross-sections and lab ethics and all these sorts of things, while also engaging with printmaking and how the common trope of printmaking is being able to do replications of things.”

The emerging artist’s efforts culminated in her receiving the Harold Spitznagel Medal for Achievement in Art at the outset of Augustana’s recent senior exhibition in May 2024.

“Art was always a big passion of mine throughout high school,” Korstjens said. “It's kind like when you're in preschool and you pick up a crayon and you never stop. But when I came to Augustana, I took on an art degree just thinking that it would be something to take the edge off the biology degree. I thought I wanted to do something in that realm of work, like genetic counseling or something like that.

“And then I was speaking with my biology advisor and she was like, ‘Hey, have you ever heard of medical illustration?’ I don't consider myself a scientific illustrator or a textbook illustrator or anything, but that really opened my eyes to what could be.”

A summer experience at Frogman’s Print Workshop in Iowa proved to be a tipping point for Korstjens’ artist journey, where exposure to other printmakers’ processes opened up a new world for her.

“It was such a foundational moment for me,” she said. “It completely opened my eyes and changed my life. At that point, I was already thinking about going to graduate school, but those two weeks really solidified that for me.”

“First Cut” print six of seven, by Gracie Korstjens

The exploration of where biology bumps into art has been a consistent motif in Korstjens’ work throughout her time at Augustana, where medium also becomes a factor in depicting the message at hand.

“I'm trying to play with it in a way that, while using the same practices and processes, each piece still stands on its own,” she said. “Sometimes that looks like the way that I apply my ink or materials to the screen or to the plate to create a print, or sometimes that looks like going in afterwards and adding some collage elements or some stitching elements. I’ve also gotten into weaving lately.

“it's just playing with all these different things and conglomerating them together to speak to how I felt growing up queer in the Midwest and other themes of identity.”

This meaning both personal and global behind Milbank, S.D. native Korstjens’ art has been a hallmark of her body of work — where “identity art” has risen to the forefront of her creating.

“I didn't realize I was making identity art until probably eight months ago maybe,” she said. “I always was priding myself on just making art about cool creatures and lab ethics. Then, I was having this conversation with a really close friend of mine, and he kind of pointed it out to me. I realized I am making identity art that speaks to the way that we as human beings can't just let nature exist as nature.

“I felt like that spoke really true to growing up queer in a small town. No matter how good you are, that's always going to be the first thing that people notice, no matter your other achievements. I was valedictorian, I was top of my class, but I always was the gay girl first. And because of that and just the scrutiny of growing up queer in a small community or even in the Midwest, I felt that those experiences metaphorically related a lot to the experiences of a lab creature — something we utilize to gain something from without considering its own existence.”

“Fighting with Myself,” intaglio, weaving, by Gracie Korstjens

This revelation has continued to help drive Korstjens’ motivation to create pieces that can build deeper understanding and appreciation for the beings that we share space with in our environment. This was perhaps never more literally dealt with in the artist’s classroom experience than a fetal pig lab in an anatomy course.

“We would start our dissection one week, and then we'd try and fold them up and put them back in the bag that they came in to continue that work the next week,” she said. “And just the act of holding that broken body and having to just continuously submit it to something that's supposed to help me learn or be beneficial to my learning was just such a foundational moment to me.”

This resulting upset from the experience led Korstjens to create a series of screen prints depicting the deterioration of a piglet’s body over time, put through the paces of generations of dissections.

“I did this progression of seven — the average number of piglets in a litter is seven — and it’s meant to represent how much we are actually still learning when people have done it for years and years and years,” she said. “And then the other investigation I did is titled ‘Repair/Disrepair,’ where I would use my extra prints and collage over them to try and ‘repair’ the pig in a way.

“It’s this motif where, sure, you can fix what you've done, but the damage will always be there. And I feel that that speaks a little bit more to the identity aspect of it. You can go through what you've been through and you're always going to probably carry that with you as much as you try to repair it. It makes you into the person that you are.”

With undergraduate studies behind her, Korstjens is looking forward to continuing cultivating her voice as an artist.

“I feel like I still have a lot to say, and I'm going to keep experiencing things that'll make me want to say even more,” she said. “But I also would really like to be in a position where I can serve as someone else's network just like I've had for myself. And that probably will look like being a professor, but it might not. I have no idea, honestly.

“I would just love to be in a position where I could help someone fall in love with the arts as much as I have and feel as at home in it as I have.”