Quaint coastal communities have a way of inspiring creativity, and if there’s a surge of new artists emerging from Block Island in the next few years, it’s safe to assume that Felicia Grace Cinquegrana of Felicia Grace Designs will have played a hand in it. A 17-year island resident, Felicia sees her home as the “last bit of the American Dream” - where artists can work in blissful solitude all winter and then reveal their work to the world when the summer crowds storm the shores.
Felicia was born in a hippie commune in Hawaii, a background that informs her sense of fashion more than her work, but also equips her with the carefree ability to spend her summers living on a small boat with her boyfriend, John, and her dog, Mira (during the winter, they rent a house, taking advantage of the offseason rates).
A graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she focused on sculpture, and with a masters in art education from the Rhode Island School of Design, Felicia spent many years teaching and advocating for the arts rather than pursuing her own artistic muse. She worked at a nonprofit in Baltimore fighting to preserve art education funding, taught art to inner-city kids in Richmond, CA, and served as the educational director of CityArts, which offers free, professional art-based education and training to Providence youth.
An organic and intuitive artist, Felicia laughingly admits that she sometimes gets bored when she has to duplicate a second earring for a set. “I think of my work as little sculptures,” she says, hearkening back to her earliest artistic training. “Every piece is completely original, and each involves some basic engineering and ergonomics, so it is sculptural in that sense.”
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