Alexis McGrigg

www.cargocollective.com/lexmcg_studio

[photography by Victoria Marie Bee, 2016]

Alexis McGrigg (b. July 9, 1989) was born in Jackson, MS and spent her childhood and beginning adolescence in Omaha, NE where she attended Beveridge Magnet School for the Performing Arts in 2000, studying visual and theatre arts. After her family moved back to Mississippi, she applied and was accepted to Mississippi School of the Arts at the age of fifteen. This would mark the beginning of her career as a Visual Artist. It was during her time there that she was introduced to painting and drawing which became her choice methods of working. She was also very interested in poetry and writing and would use her sketchbook to record ideas and writings that resonated with her. At this time, she only sampled the writings of poets and authors. 

Alexis continued in the Visual Arts on into college, denying that she was a Painter, she began studying Graphic Design for her first three years. She was almost finished with her program, but she was terribly unhappy with her studies. At the beginning of her fourth year, she changed her emphasis to Painting and never looked back. She experimented with many mediums and ideas leading up to her thesis, which focused on stereotypes and caricatures of African American women. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Mississippi State University in 2012. 

In 2014, Alexis was admitted to the Master of Fine Arts program at Texas Tech University with a concentration in Painting and a secondary in Photography. She is an emerging contemporary artist who explores identity, race, spirituality, and collective consciousness in her work. She has participated in several exhibitions with organizations and galleries across the U.S. in New Orleans, Las Vegas, Brooklyn, and Chicago.