Gabrielle Ione Hickmon (b. 1994) is a Black woman from a middle place—Ypsilanti, MI. Her lab is a place where clay, words, and herbs meet. She is interested in body memory,¹ ² waiting rooms, placekeeping, circles, the African American Midwest, ecomemory³, jazz, and ocular proof.⁴
Gabrielle’s work includes essays, qualitative research, and hand-built ceramics. She won Bronze in the Leisure, Games, & Sport category of the 2022 Information is Beautiful Awards and First Honorable Mention in the 2022 NYU American Journalism Online Awards for her ethnographic research project, How You Play Spades is How You Play Life: Spades in the African American Community. Her writing has appeared in Vox, Condé Nast Traveler, The Baffler, The Pudding, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. She attended Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania. Gabrielle will begin her doctoral studies in History with a focus on the African American family in the Great Lakes Region from the 1800s to the present at the University of Michigan in the fall of 2024.
Gabrielle is currently at work on The Boyne City Project, a multi-media family history project that explores multiple periods and contexts of African American history in Michigan prior to, through, and after the Great Migration, a memoir about her experience with breast cancer, and WORKING PROCESS, a series of conversations with other Black women ceramic artists about their work and process.
Gabrielle has been in residence at Pocoapoco, Mas Palou, Mudhouse, and John Bauer Ceramics. Gabrielle will soon be in residence at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, the Modern Ancient Brown Foundation’s Post-Bac Residency Program and The Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow. In 2023, Gabrielle was awarded a fellowship to Haystack Mountain’s 5th Summer Session in Ceramics to study smoke-firing under Madoda Fani. Gabrielle works out of a studio in Ypsilanti, MI.
BIOGRAPHY
Lives in Ypsilanti, MI.
1994 Born in Ypsilanti, MI
EDUCATION
Incoming The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Fall 2024 Doctoral Student, History
2017 The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Masters of Science: International Educational Development
2016 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Bachelors of Science: Industrial and Labor Relations
AWARDS / FELLOWSHIPS / RESIDENCIES
2025 The Modern Ancient Brown Foundation
Post-Bac Residency Program (Winter 2025)
2024 Rackham Merit Fellowship
Visual Arts Center of Richmond (Summer 2024)
John Bauer Ceramics Artist Residency
2023 Haystack Mountain Fellowship
5th Summer Session in Ceramics with Madoda Fani
2022 Data Visualization Society Information is Beautiful Awards:
Bronze, Leisure, Games & Sport
NYU American Journalism Online Awards:
First Honorable Mention, Best Data Visualization
Pocoapoco, Independent Study
2021 The Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow:
Accepted to the Writer-in-Residence program
Open Invitation
EXHIBITIONS
2024 Life and Death Gallery
The Big Bang, Group Show
2023 Ann Arbor Art Center Aquarium Gallery
Descendants, curated by Thea Eck
PRESS
2024 Interview: Trying in Public
2023 Interview: SPACIES
Interview: Radio Africa
Interview: Policy Viz
CITATIONS
¹ McKittrick, K. (2006). Demonic grounds: Black women and the cartographies of struggle. U of Minnesota Press.
² Philip, M. N. (1994). Dis Place: The Space Between. Feminist Measures, 287-316.
³ Harris, M. (2017). Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths. Orbis Books.
⁴ Gunning, S. (2021). Moving home: gender, place, and travel writing in the early Black Atlantic. Duke University Press.
© 2024 Gabrielle Ione Hickmon. All Rights Reserved.