Biography

Tracie Noles-Ross has been actively creating and exhibiting art for 20 years in Birmingham, Alabama. In 2004 her work was featured in a solo exhibition called Calliope's Moon at Bare Hands Gallery. The artist saw this as a turning point in her approach to the creative process. Acknowledging that life and art are inseparable, she began to approach the process in a more holistic way. Her geographical and interpersonal horizons were both expanded at this point in her life and work. The work in this series examined themes of motherhood as well as her travels to China to adopt her first daughter. That same year Noles-Ross and her family were featured in an Emmy nominated National Geographic documentary made for MSNBC entitled, China's Lost Girls.

In 2006 she shared billing with fellow Alabama artist Wendi Flowers in an exhibition, also at Bare Hands. This show revolved around themes of childhood and memory. This series came on the heels of the artist bringing a second daughter into her family. Raising two girls heavily influenced the direction of the artist's new work. Ideas about self image and how we define ourselves by our life experiences plays heavily in the creation of her work. Memory, sensory triggers, personal symbolism and the affect of culture on the development of identity dominate her new work.

Noles-Ross has had solo exhibitions in galleries such as The University of Alabama at Birmingham, The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, The University of North Alabama at Florence, The Fifth Gate Arts Center, The Birmingham Art Association and Bare Hands Gallery. She has also been responsible for such projects as co-founding The Fifth Gate Arts Center Gallery and Artists Studio co-op and co-founded the Flood and Mystic Chamber Salon, an experimental artist installation group. She has been a stable artist at Bare Hands gallery for 10 years, since the gallery's inception.

She has received awards from the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans , Anderson Ranch in Snowmass Colorado and Art's Alive in Florence Alabama. Noles-Ross along with several other Alabama artists was commissioned in 2000 to create a low relief sculpture for the Alabama Veterans Memorial. In 2001, Noles-Ross was invited by the Women's Studies Program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham to curate the exhibition Firsts: The Personal and the Historical, an exhibition honoring Women's History Month. She was given an Award of Excellence by The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Women's Studies Program for her work.