Being sequestered inside for 3 months during the pandemic has led me to make a book about testing my sanity. It is made up of a series of Rorschach tests that reference the landscape. (Lauri)
4” x 2.5” x 2” Pine bark, cotton, watercolor, ink, collage 2020
COLLECTION: U.C. Berkeley College of Environmental Design library.
Using images of different types of landscape collapse I wanted to make the observation in these extraordinary times of the decline of our environment and our culture. From everything including loss of our creatures, soil erosion, humankind strife and corruption in our institutions that all seem to be on the brink of disaster.
12” x 12” x 1.5” Cotton, ink, collage, birch bark 2020
COLLECTION: U.C. Berkeley College of Environmental Design library
This series started in 2020 as the pandemic began to spread rapidly and California Governor Gavin Newson declared a shelter in place order. In my studio I had paper, ink, watercolors and some old children’s dictionaries. Each day there were reports on the radio of the growing epidemic, racial injustice, police brutality, raging fires & floods, elections, insurrections and evidence of the rise of fascism. I started drawing the most available subject, me. In the dictionaries I found definitions and illustrations serendipitously relating to my feelings and the events of the day. They were collaged along with the self portraits into an artists’ book. As these events escalated, more drawings were made and then more books followed. A total of nine were finished before I ended the series after the more than two years since the pandemic started. (Lauri)
This series is in the collection of artists’ books in the U.C. Berkeley College of Environmental Design library.
How can this hold together? And what is beyond? What is currently happening to our democracy, political figures and events, has inspired synonymous garden elements of weeds and flowers, invasives and blooms that includes pollinators.
7.5″ x 4.5″ x 2″, Wood, metal, paper, collage, found objects 2022
This was the second Reading the Landscape exhibition. The exhibition was held at the College of Environmental Design Library on the University of California Berkeley campus for Fall semester 2021. Some of the artists’ books had been shown before, some are in the collection of the library and some are new, such as the Covid and Me series. Most of the books can be found on this website. (Lauri)
