About

Lydia Gravis, b. 1981 in Spokane, Washington, is a visual artist and arts administrator. While working as a university art gallery director from 2014-2024, she oversaw over 75 large scale indoor and outdoor exhibitions of work by local, national, and internationally renowned artists working at the forefront of contemporary art, and a robust schedule of auxiliary programs including visiting artist lectures, film screenings, outreach programs, and professional development opportunities for students and alumni. Lydia developed and managed community focused grant and donor funded visual arts outreach and mentorship programs in Northern Utah from 2007-2014, and continues to advocate for the value of cultural capital return on financial capital investment within communities, institutions, and the private sector.

Lydia earned her B.A. with dual majors in Visual Art and Human Studies from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina in 2003 and her M.F.A. in Contemporary Visual Art from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University in Boston, Massachusetts in 2013. Her identity as an artist is integral to her work as an arts administrator and curator, and she exhibits her own studio work regularly in solo and group exhibitions.  She received the Ogden Mayor's Award in the Arts in 2020, and her work is held in the Salt Lake County and State of Utah Alice Merrill Horne art collections.  Her work was featured in American Art Collector magazine in 2019, and she regularly participates in national and international artist residencies to expand her professional network and further her studio practice and field research. She currently lives and works in the Nine Rails Arts District in Ogden, Utah with her husband and two children.