Chatting to Tracie May

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Born and raised in NY, Tracie May grew up being influenced by artist’s work she had the opportunity to encounter as a child. From Picasso’s Guernica to Basquiat, and the Egyptian exhibits of King Tutankhamun at the Met to Salvador Dali, and contemporary artists of the Whitney Biennial, she was exposed to a wide variety of creative geniuses starting at an early age.

Tracie knew as a child that she would become an artist with skills in multiple media.

Upon graduating high school on Long Island, she left NY and found herself at Washington University in Saint Lewis. She graduated with honors and a BFA, and was also coxswain for her varsity crew team. That allowed her to combine her love of sports and art. Then she moved on to graduate school at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan where she earned her MFA with a concentration in sculpture.

Her breadth of knowledge in contemporary art and her skills in all media including video, photography, installation, sculpture, metals, jewelry, glass blowing, sewing, construction, painting and more, quickly won Tracie an Artist in Residence award at the Cité International des Art in Paris, France.

From there, she moved back to NY full of ideas and motivation. It was during this time that Tracie rented a large loft in the now famous Chelsea region of NYC. She was able to create an artist’s collective in which she and fellow artisans could exhibit their work and create without the pressure of the gallery mindset.

She began revisiting her fondness for athletics and started ski racing again in upstate NY. She was quickly recognized for her prowess in speed while racing with her sister and was invited to the national speed ski championships in Colorado, where she placed 3rd in her first race. She was hooked and didn’t want to take a complete break from art while she pursued a speed ski career, so she found work at some of New York City’s finest museums. Working as a freelance metalsmith for the Guggenheim, American Museum of Natural History and the Brooklyn Museum to name a few, enabled her to simultaneously pursue an athletic career in speed skiing.

Tracie found her job as a freelance mount maker at the Guggenheim the most satisfying of all the museums she worked at. This creative environment was just what she needed in the downtime of her athletic career, which was skyrocketing quickly for her to become the best in the world. During 14 years of hard work at the Guggenheim, Tracie also became a 5 time World Cup Champion, Pro world Champion, FIS World Champion and American Women’s record holder with a speed of 238.57 km/ hour or 148.57 mph. That is a record that has held since 2006, astonishingly over a decade.

This achievement was recognized in 2018 when she was inducted into the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Recently she was nominated as one of 6 ahtletes for the US national Ski Hall of fame.

While Tracie is now retired from competitive Speed Skiing, she is still connected to the sport as a ski instructor in the Swiss Alps and a ski technician for her husband who still races.

She is currently getting her studio back in shape after a cancer diagnosis in 2019. She has been fighting hard and has finished her radiation treatments. She is relieved to have that segment of her cancer journey completed and knows she will have to fight more. She feels this will only give her more ammunition to be creative and continue to create artwork to share with the world. Her specialty and true love is still silver-smithing and jewelry.

IG: @swissbijou

Jewellery website: http://www.jewelrybytracie.com/home/

Speedski website: http://www.quickchick.com