Lauren Packard, "In Your Eyes I See Right Through"
glazed ceramic
8" x 6" x 5"
2022
STATEMENT
My work explores queer identity, nostalgia, and femininity. I disorient and disrupt through a combination of marks, textures, and material, referencing punk, Riot Grrrl culture, and the domestic. I use abstraction to examine the tension between material/emotion, and language/memory; juxtaposing rawness and order, soft and hard, structured and unrefined. I’m interested in allowing materials and elements to play off one another, while also rebelling against the status quo.
My ceramic practice includes both hand building and clay piping. For the piping I blend down the clay into a consistency similar to cake frosting. I use this technique to create incredibly textured pieces that become vulnerable, intimate worlds of their own. I like juxtaposing the universally recognized cake piping as a social entrance into these guarded and unknown spaces, as if “by invitation only”. There is a taking back or reclaiming of these forms of domesticity- cake decoration, laces, and ruffles- in a material that is also domestic at its’ root. This work challenges ideas about labor and what has traditionally been called “women’s work”, specifically baking and sewing which invoke ingrained cultural ideas about gender, labor and the body; a queering of the domestic.
BIO
Lauren Packard is a feminist mixed media artist living in Brooklyn. After undergoing brain surgery in 2014, she began painting to visually express what words couldn’t. Lauren considers her work an extension of her inner thoughts and dialogue, both conscious and subconscious. Gestural abstract marks are expressive forms of communication, essential after brain surgery and now an instinctive part of her visual and emotional vocabulary. Lauren’s work explores queer identity, domesticity, and femininity through the use of materials and intuitive marks. There is a tension and spontaneity in how marks and materials interact and react to one another; a push-pull in exploring the visceral.
glazed ceramic
8" x 6" x 5"
2022
STATEMENT
My work explores queer identity, nostalgia, and femininity. I disorient and disrupt through a combination of marks, textures, and material, referencing punk, Riot Grrrl culture, and the domestic. I use abstraction to examine the tension between material/emotion, and language/memory; juxtaposing rawness and order, soft and hard, structured and unrefined. I’m interested in allowing materials and elements to play off one another, while also rebelling against the status quo.
My ceramic practice includes both hand building and clay piping. For the piping I blend down the clay into a consistency similar to cake frosting. I use this technique to create incredibly textured pieces that become vulnerable, intimate worlds of their own. I like juxtaposing the universally recognized cake piping as a social entrance into these guarded and unknown spaces, as if “by invitation only”. There is a taking back or reclaiming of these forms of domesticity- cake decoration, laces, and ruffles- in a material that is also domestic at its’ root. This work challenges ideas about labor and what has traditionally been called “women’s work”, specifically baking and sewing which invoke ingrained cultural ideas about gender, labor and the body; a queering of the domestic.
BIO
Lauren Packard is a feminist mixed media artist living in Brooklyn. After undergoing brain surgery in 2014, she began painting to visually express what words couldn’t. Lauren considers her work an extension of her inner thoughts and dialogue, both conscious and subconscious. Gestural abstract marks are expressive forms of communication, essential after brain surgery and now an instinctive part of her visual and emotional vocabulary. Lauren’s work explores queer identity, domesticity, and femininity through the use of materials and intuitive marks. There is a tension and spontaneity in how marks and materials interact and react to one another; a push-pull in exploring the visceral.
glazed ceramic
8" x 6" x 5"
2022
STATEMENT
My work explores queer identity, nostalgia, and femininity. I disorient and disrupt through a combination of marks, textures, and material, referencing punk, Riot Grrrl culture, and the domestic. I use abstraction to examine the tension between material/emotion, and language/memory; juxtaposing rawness and order, soft and hard, structured and unrefined. I’m interested in allowing materials and elements to play off one another, while also rebelling against the status quo.
My ceramic practice includes both hand building and clay piping. For the piping I blend down the clay into a consistency similar to cake frosting. I use this technique to create incredibly textured pieces that become vulnerable, intimate worlds of their own. I like juxtaposing the universally recognized cake piping as a social entrance into these guarded and unknown spaces, as if “by invitation only”. There is a taking back or reclaiming of these forms of domesticity- cake decoration, laces, and ruffles- in a material that is also domestic at its’ root. This work challenges ideas about labor and what has traditionally been called “women’s work”, specifically baking and sewing which invoke ingrained cultural ideas about gender, labor and the body; a queering of the domestic.
BIO
Lauren Packard is a feminist mixed media artist living in Brooklyn. After undergoing brain surgery in 2014, she began painting to visually express what words couldn’t. Lauren considers her work an extension of her inner thoughts and dialogue, both conscious and subconscious. Gestural abstract marks are expressive forms of communication, essential after brain surgery and now an instinctive part of her visual and emotional vocabulary. Lauren’s work explores queer identity, domesticity, and femininity through the use of materials and intuitive marks. There is a tension and spontaneity in how marks and materials interact and react to one another; a push-pull in exploring the visceral.