by Conner Shea
Natalie Clark lives a life that seems straight out of a leading art magazine.
She owns a studio with a vineyard outside of Barcelona, holds a position on the Kennedy Center board of directors, and experiences a life of travel that immerses her in extremely varied cultures. Her work has been featured in Vogue, USA Today, and Good Morning America, among others.
True to the nature of being a contemporary artist though, those surface-level achievements don’t cut to what is most important for Clark.
Shaping and molding those successes, Clark is decidedly not the loud, pompous personality that those accolades might suggest. Instead, her life is that of an individual that prioritizes passionately deep introspection, voluntary isolation, and a wholly devout work ethic.
Nowhere are the above-mentioned values more apparent than in her studio in Tetonia.
The space, originally a decrepit, abandoned 100-year-old LDS church, was nurtured through painstaking effort and many, many renovations all the way up to the present.
Clark came to own the Tetonia space in 1989, in her mid 20’s.
“Craig the plumber, who lived next door, owned it. I knocked on his door and asked “hey dude, do you want to sell this?” and he was just like huh?” said Clark, with a laugh that acknowledged how absurd it must have been to hear the offer, spoken in a thick English accent.
“About 6 months later he contacted me and said that he would like to sell it,” said Clark.
The front entryway leads directly into her workspace, complete with past works from Clark’s ‘Crystalline Spires—Faceted Gems’ project. As one’s jaw drops in the shadows of 10-foot-tall prismatic shapes, an abundance of natural light filters in through the restored church windows.
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