Lauren Jacobs

Artist's Statement

I am a surrealist figure sculptor who focuses on the relationship of my body to its environment.

I believe that the space where body and environment blend into each other is where consciousness exists. Creating representations of that space is my way of exploring consciousness and its limits. Consciousness is carried by cycles: waking to dreaming to waking, life to death to life.

My sculptures are mixed media, with soft and hard components, relating to hair, bone, architecture, anatomy, roots or branches. I use saturated colors and detail work, like embroidery, beadwork, patina and painting to create a push-pull between visceral, surreal imagery and beauty. My work invites touch and is often interactive.

I am inspired by mythology, dream meditations, and the natural metaphors I see around me. Over the last couple years, my work has primarily focused on three series:

“A Body of Work” is inspired by a Cherokee myth: when humans first became aware, we buckled under the weight of consciousness, sending a crack down our soul that split it into the heart self and the shadow self. Now we live unbalanced because of the miscommunications between these two selves and our body. The path to wholeness is in blending these two selves back together, and this process is called ‘becoming human’.

“The Falling of Heaven” is based on personal mythology from my childhood. In my parents’ front yard there was a cherry blossom tree, and when I was little I used to look up at the sky through the blossoming branches and think that was what heaven looked like. When the tree started dying, losing branches and furling inward like a rotting leaf, its mortality seemed impossible to me. It wasn't just the death of a tree, it was the death of an architectural element of my childhood.

“Gradually Green” is a series of happenings and interactive work driven by my involvement with sustainability and community concerned organizations. I am concerned by the saturation of empty buzzwords in the media, and completely uninterested in guilt tactics that only serve to alienate and turn people off. Instead I focus on questions and the community experience.

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