ABOUT THE ARTIST
Linda Mullen is the founder & owner of Grace & Diggs.
She credits love of botanical shapes to childhhood summers spent roaming the woods with her feral friends. They built secret forts, wove dandelion crowns, picked berries, daydreamt their way through the days. Linda's current work is an anchor to those days. In re-imagining found materials, she remembers what is was to build whole worlds from a few scraps or create narratives from unexpected shapes.
Linda has practiced architecture and been a teacher - professions that are helpful in her work with municipal and educational organizations to implement large-scale projects.
ABOUT THE NAME
Grace & Diggs is based in Salem, Massachusetts. It began as a shop on Salem's "Artists' Row," an initiative by the city of Salem that supports artistic entrepreneurship.
The shop featured art and other handcrafted products intended for the home. The name referenced a graceful home along with an old slang term for home - "digs." As decoration, Linda included hats made from recycled paper bags (something she learned from a former roomate a long time ago which is a whole other story). The hats took off! Linda discovered she loved making hats & headpieces above all else.
When Linda shifted her focus from retail to a studio-based practice she kept the name. Life as an artist throws all sorts of digs & curveballs and she strives to meet those challenges with equal measures of lightness, grit, & grace.
Linda uses "Grace & Diggs" as an umbrella term for herself along with the interns & collaborators that work with her.