LAUREN NAOMI - Van Gogh Art Gallery

"My process always begins with a hand-sculpted petal I’ve pulled from a hearty ball of clay. I might continue sculpting more petals and build an entire rose or instead might pull, smash, roll, or stretch the petal against a surface. Sometimes I smear the clay onto canvas like a brush stroke and often I create blooms of varying degrees of expression and implied movement. From flimsy, wilted petals to swaying, dancing blossoms, petals are combined to form letters or words or left in abstraction as a secret garden.

However each composition takes shape, every one of my works has a particular theme in mind during the sculpting process. Each is a pointed attempt to bring an often unseen idea or thing into a tangible, physical form. It might creating a visual representation of a certain mood, reaction, response or thought. Or maybe it's an attempt to creatively and abstractly illustrate a biological or natural process, a portrait of a person, concept or thing. Whatever it ends up being, it is always an attempted visual embodiment of an idea, created through my self-constructed language of clay petals."

Lauren Naomi creates compelling, kaleidoscopic, sculptural works out of clay floral petals that explore the intricate nuances of self and self-in-world as well as complex concepts of identity in a larger social context or community. From highly ornate wallhung landscapes of abstract and realistic buds to minimalist flowering freestanding sculptures and ceiling suspensions, Lauren brings an ever-blooming garden indoors with her elaborate clay flowers and petal formations. Through her creations, she embodies and transcends a four-generation family tradition of floral crafting in a process uniquely her own. Hand-sculpting thousands of clay petals, she meticulously arranges them in dynamic explosions of color and texture on traditional canvases as well as unexpected materials including chicken wire, packing paper and car tires, incorporating everyday human objects of use into her metaphorical compositions.

Lauren Naomi (b. 1975) is from Sharon, Massachusetts and has resided in New York, City since 1993. She holds a BA in Psychology with a Visual Arts Concentration from Barnard College, Columbia University and an MA in Art/Art Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.