Alexandra Gjurasic has exhibited her paintings in solo and group exhibitions in galleries throughout the United States since the age of 15 years old. Her first solo show was at a home town Seattle watering hole called the Romper Room. She was too young to even attend the opening. Also at the age of 15 she was accepted in Cornish College of the Arts. Gjurasic chose to pursue her passion in the arts in a non traditional route. By the time she graduated high school she had participated in over a dozen group and solo exhibitions.
Gjurasic has also received many awards and honors for her art work, as well as her social justice activism work. She won the Anna Gould Hamburg portfolio competition in 1994 and that body of work was then displayed at the Seattle Art Museum. She has received the Arbitrary Art Grant for Video from Vital 5 Productions in 1999. In 2001 she was the first recipient of the John Caughlan Youth Activist Award from Northwest Labor and Law Offices (L.E.L.O) for her international social justice work and Seattle mayor Paul Shell declared Alexandra Gjurasic Day. Her social justice pursuits included participating in a caravan of 20,000 travels in solidarity with Zapatista movement of Mexico that culminated in a march of 300,000 demonstrators in Mexico City. This experience then inspired a solo exhibition entitled Zapatismo at Secluded Alley Works.
While studying to receive her degree in Art’s Management from Seattle Central Community College, she was asked to sit on the board at the Center on Contemporary Art in 2000. She is the youngest board member to do so. While with C.o.C.A. she developed insight into the experience of both artist and curator. Also at this time Gjurasic was the assistant curator at the S.C.C.C. art gallery.
In 2003 Gjurasic bid farewell to the Emerald City for the Emerald Coast of Florida. Since that move, she has exhibited her paintings continually in Seattle as well as livening up the Pensacola area by participating exhibitions. In 2005, she was honored to show her work at the Pensacola Museum of Art as part of the Annual Member’s Show, highlighting the diversity of art in the gulf coast. That same year she was also juried in to show her work in a exhibition for emerging artists called No Dead Artist’s, at Jonathan Ferrera Gallery of New Orleans, Louisiana. Unfortunately, that exhibition was preempted because of Hurricane Katrina then remounted one year later, a testament to the resilience of New Orleans. During her residence in the southern United States Gjurasic and her paintings evacuated three times due to hurricanes.
In 2009 the Japanese American National Museum and the Los Angeles Toy Doll and Amusement Museum invited Gjurasic to show her art as part of the exhibition entitled Kokeshi: Folk Art to Art Toy. The exhibition was curated by Maria Kwong was and seen by over 20,000 visitors.
Born in Seattle, Washington in 1977, Alexandra Gjurasic continues an artist’s lineage from both parents. Her mother Susan Marsh is a metal smith and artist and her father Mark Gjurasic is an artist turned lobbyist. Most notable is Gjurasic’s great uncle Gabre Rajcevic, renowned painter from her father’s home country, Croatia. In 2009 Gjurasic visited Dubrovnik, Croatia and viewed her great uncle’s work at the Museum of Modern Art. Gjurasic herself is a blend of her of passion for creativity and society, both interlacing in her art.
"Rather than exploiting the similarities of mass-produced objects, Gjurasic emphasizes the variety and richness in multitude through her kokeshi inspired paintings and collages. For the artist, the dolls became symbols of her own inner world where fertility, conception, pregnancy, birth and transitioning into motherhood were all themes within her work."