Billi London-Gray is a visual artist and writer. She was born in Plano, Texas, in 1982 and grew up in the small town of Wylie, Texas. She earned a B.A. in theology from Criswell College in 2004 and an M.A. in liberal arts from St. John’s College in 2008.

Her intermedia work examines recontextualization and translation as essential processes of the human narrative. Through the separation and reintegration of parts — whether by appropriating images and text, repurposing found objects, altering iconic imagery, abstracting environments, or combining disparate symbols — she explores the ways in which people construct and inhabit their realities.

For example, her “Exact Change” series — consisting of altered images of elongated Lincoln pennies printed on aluminum — invokes the revered legacy of the Great Emancipator, the devaluation of the coin, and the plasticity of Abraham Lincoln as a pop culture figure. Her piece “Let Me In Let Me Out” projects video of feminist artists discussing barriers they have faced onto a flannel screen hung behind a floor-to-ceiling crocheted chain-link fence. By placing familiar materials in unexpected contexts, her work questions the longevity of values and invites individual interpretations across a spectrum of meaning.

“We see what we want to see,” she says. “We edit our histories. We build our own realities, worlds in which we can feel comfortable, safe and right. My approach mirrors the selection and fabrication of perceived reality in the human mind.” In probing this process, she contributes to the global dialog about our shared humanity and how we simultaneously create, control and consume the world around us.

Billi London-Gray was appointed an artist-in-residence at Petrified Forest National Park in 2014. She also is an active advocate for community art and public access to the arts. She is a founding organizer of the BEST Art Tour and a member of Art Advocates of San Marcos. She curates the Gallery of the Common Experience at Texas State University and co-owns the nonprofit Zosima Gallery in San Marcos, Texas, where she lives and works.