Grace Garner’s journey between her debut EP as Grace Inspace – 2023’s ‘Sunshine Kid’ – and her upcoming second EP ‘Heavy Hair’ has been one that’s shone a light on her resilience.

It’s a facet of the LA-born, London-raised artist that’s been ingrained in her since childhood, shaped by her artistic parents and their nomadic lifestyle. But all of these formative moments have come together to make an artist who can tackle anything life throws at her.

It all begins with the literal meaning of ‘heavy hair’, which was something a young Grace pondered a lot. Mockingly modelling the titular barnet of flowing brown locks to Dork over Zoom from her LA homestead, she’s quick to offer up a childhood insight. “I used to draw these women with hair that dragged on the floor, that was weighing them down, and I would bring them to my mum and be like, ‘This is how I feel’,” she recalls. “My emotions are in my hair, and it’s pulling my head down.”

While this is quite the, er, heavy scene to paint, these drawings were stored away by Grace’s mum and resurfaced a couple of years ago. Upon seeing them, she realised nothing much had changed. “I thought, like, wow, that’s still how I feel. The concept of that was stuck in my head for so long.”

‘Heavy Hair’ came to life as a collaborative effort. A first for Grace since her debut EP was written and recorded in sessions with various producers, and while she’s fond of the songs, she found each track was written from a fictional perspective. This time around, she dug deep and chose to become more personal with her output. It’s a move she could only do with a little help from her friends.

Taking this idea and putting her lyrical diary entries to music, it all began to come together. With her ideas sketched out, she took them to her friend and producer, Josh Mehling, where they began to flesh them out properly. Bringing the classically trained, multi-instrumentalist Luna Li into the mix (“Who can play any instrument, even if she doesn’t know how to play it”), who also features on ‘Meteor’, it all took the shape of a bright new iteration of Grace Inspace.

“Working with other musicians that you admire is the best part of being an artist,” Grace explains, “because so much is you alone in your bedroom trying to turn a diary entry into something. So when I started writing this, it was with the intent that I wanted it to involve my community as much as possible.”

However, her resilience was soon to be tested. It was around the time she was nearing the deadline for her EP that the 2025 LA fires happened, which sadly rendered her Altadena house uninhabitable. But these moments are a part of the larger Grace picture of staying strong. “I’ve always had a very transient life, because my parents are artists, so we were always moving around with a bohemian poverty kind of existence,” she explains. With this territory came a yearning to feel steady, which her house was for a brief time. “But then I was bouncing around sofa to sofa again, and then I got long COVID. It was such a strange year that even though I had written the EP before it all, it was my anchor through all of that.”

Needing to get the EP done and essentially made homeless, she moved into her aunt’s and set up a ramshackle vocal booth in a closet, and before she knew it, her EP was finished and its release imminent. This is the cathartic moment for Grace. She likens it to a chapter closing, ready for this brand spanking new one – with her new house and her new life building up steadily post-fire – with everything she’s learned from this collaborative process that she’s ready to take with her. This level of optimism and forward-thinking focus is an inherent part of Grace, thanks to that transient early life she had.

“I feel like I’m good at staying optimistic through all of those peaks and pits of life, which is also something I learned from my parents,” she explains. “They were more at the helm of the Tempest, but they were also experiencing the ups and downs of our artistic itinerant existence, and they always managed to make things feel magical, even when they were stressful, even when we had no money, and we didn’t have somewhere to live. Like they always managed to make it feel like still a fairy tale, and like it was always going to get better.”

When parents skew in a particular direction as hard as Grace’s parents did, often you find the children veer as hard away. In fact, Grace did to a degree, and she’s just as surprised that she didn’t end up in something as suit and tie as corporate law. “I feel like I was very studious at school,” she laughs. “I was very disapproving of my parents and was rebelling with my straight A’s, and my dad used to bribe me to go to parties. He’d be like, ‘Oh, I’ll give you a lift. I’ll wait outside, just go’. He was like, ‘I want to be called into the headmistress’s office once!’”

This would ultimately prove futile given Grace’s current career. Especially since she was born in LA, where in her parents’ basement – a makeshift studio-cum-magazine-publisher – and as a toddler she couldn’t keep away from, the creative was always going to be a part of Grace’s life.

Her musical education came from her father, who’d send her on her school bus commute with an iPod shuffle loaded with her assignments. From The Replacements to Dinosaur Jr, as well as her mum’s penchant for Parliament-Funkadelic (“I think she was married to one of them?”). It was Lorde’s debut, ‘Pure Heroine’, that made the greatest impression on Grace. “It was one of my solo discoveries, and that hit just when my teenage angst was at its peak. So I’d be like, on the bus with it raining, feeling like the main character, like, ‘Oh, my God, she gets me’.”

As for what she wants to get out of this career of hers, it’s quite simple, really. “I feel like the more that I make music and the longer I’m existing in this life, and when I’m defining what success is, I really want to provide what has been provided to me through books and music and just any kind of art form that you can observe. I want to narrate people’s lives.” In particular, her reflections take her back to those days on the top deck of the school bus, where people can use Grace’s music to become their own main character. “It’s more of a fantasy world that I’m building.”

When you’re unable to have a physical location as home, sometimes that community you’ve amassed becomes a stand-in. That’s what Grace is looking for from her project, beyond true creative expression. “I feel like it all just comes back to community. I just want to expand it and find other people that don’t have the words to describe what they’re feeling, so they can listen to my music or read the lyrics and feel part of something,” she ponders. “I like where Grace Inspace is right now, and I just want to keep building off of that. I want people to feel seen and heard.” In a world that can feel hellishly relentless, Grace Inspace offers a safe place where embracing emotion – and your little intricacies – is wonderfully encouraged. ■

Taken from the March 2026 issue of Dork. Grace Inspace’s EP ’Heavy Hair’ is out 27th February.