 John Yau relates Grad's carefully developed, "splintered pictorial space" and ability to maintain a continuous tension between defined sections and the overall image to the abstract landscapes of Richard Diebenkorn.Others cite the tangled abstractions of Terry Winters, but note in Grad's flitting between the tangible and evanescent, a greater emotional register that expresses the difficulty of navigating complex communication, geographic and psychological divides.In 1973, Grad was one of five women artists, including Joy Poe (her studio mate), Phyllis McDonald, Emily Pinkowski and Margaret Wharton, who started the women's collaborative Artemisia Gallery in Chicago, named after the pioneering 17th-century female artist Artemisia Gentileschi.