Laurel graduated from UC Santa Barbara in the dark ages with a degree in art, emphasizing photography. After shooting many stressful weddings and working in a photo lab for three years, she realized that being a wedding photographer may very well destroy her love for the medium and that she had to safeguard photography as her inspiration and passion. She took graduate classes at the San Francisco Art Institute and at John F. Kennedy University but decided that rather than go into extreme debt, she would forgo a master’s degree and just continue to make art. She has participated in art exhibitions throughout the Bay Area for many years and will continue to do so.
Eventually, she decided to explore a career in Graphic Design which ended up being a perfect fit. She went to night school while working and birthing children and received a Certificate in Graphic Design from UC Berkeley. She was able utilize her creativity, photographic skills and writing (she started at UCSB with a major in English) in print and web communications and actually make money doing it! As we all know, most artists have a hard time getting to the “making money” part. She has now worked for International House, UC Berkeley for about 20 years in communications and design (print and on-line). She has lived in California for most of her life and currently resides in Lafayette with her husband Alex and three fabulous daughters who are currently in college or recently graduated from one. Her house has a constantly rotating door, which she loves.
Laurel’s photographs have become the basis for most of her artwork, but not the sole element of it. She has gone from painting on her photographs to creating multi-media pieces that are a mix of found objects, photographs and paint that she often calls “Urban Artifacts”. At one point in her past, she was interested in becoming an archeologist and later (at JFK University) took an amazing class that focused on making artwork from that endlessly fascinating alternative universe of dreams. Her “artifacts” touch on the surreal that may spark a memory, experience, desire, hope that is somehow familiar; a hopefully mind opening narrative that beckons to the viewer and encourages them to participate in an experience of their own.
