Randomness can be frustrating.

This is what happens when I find a tick on my sweet Neko.

I am not a fan of the heebeegeebees.

He likes me, he really likes me!

I just heard some great news from Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station.  I have been accepted into their Annual Juried Show; this year the Juror is San Francisco Chronicle’s Art Critic Kenneth Baker.

The opening reception is this Sunday, January 17th from 3pm-5pm.

If you don’t have plans, now you do (:

The show will run from January 15 – February 14, 2010 – so if you don’t have a chance to get to the opening, check out the show some other time you are in the area.

A little press love has been sent my way…

RCC shows Berkeley artist

Berkeley artist Lauren Odell Usher is displaying her work at the Wiseman Gallery on the Rogue Community College campus. The exhibit, “Did You Wake Up This Morning,” runs through Aug. 28.

Usher uses linocut prints of everyday people on everyday items, such as bags, toilet paper, pillows and pizza boxes, to visually represent the value the mundane holds and the connections all people share.

Usher has a bachelor of fine arts degree from Oregon State University and a master’s degree in studio art from John F. Kennedy University. Her work has been shown in California and in Florida.

If you happen to be near Grants Pass, OR in the next month or so, check out the show.  Would love to hear what you think.

Update on a Particular Project

I have not been as diligent as I would like to be in terms of collecting material for my Significant Stranger Project.

In the beginning, the project entailed a numerous amount of stuff being sent to me from a stranger that I will never meet.  That concept still remains the same, however, I have decided to take it one step at a time.

I would like anyone who is willing to send me the following:

1.  One photograph of your living room.

2.  One photograph of the front of your house.

What will I be doing with these photos you ask?  Making a montage of sorts….

So, if you want to join in on this worldwide art piece, please do.  Leave a comment and I will get back to you or send the image to me via email.

Thanks for the help.

The art wouldn’t exist without you.

Lauren

Looks like we’ve got ourselves a reader

I was reading today–a book entitled, “The Art of the Everyday: The Quotidian in Post War France,” and had to kind of laugh at myself. So, I tend to buy anything that has the words ordinary, mundane, everyday, boring, whatever on it. Anything relating to the everyday lives people lead. I am aware that my life is different and similar in so many ways to other people. I don’t live in a hut and hunt my own food, but I do wake up every morning, breath, feel, wash dishes, clean my house, etc. Anyway, for some time I have been obsessed with those everyday actions connecting us all. That explains my fascination with reading about it.

So, I found a couple of artists that I know I would totally have been friends with if A. I were French B. I were in my 2o’s in the late 1990′s and C. If I were making the work I make now in the late 1990′s. I happened to be in high school at the time, obsessed with the weather and photographing it as it was occurring. (That was my senior year final project–sounds interesting I know! But not really if you live in Arizona, where the weather doesn’t really happen.)

Onto the essay I read where I found my new friends. Written by Lynn Gumpert, entitled, “Beyond the Banal: An Introduction to the Art of the Everyday.” If you have seen any of my work, you know I should be in this club. Anyway, most of the artists seem to be documenting the everyday. Lots of photographers using their own lives and own families as subject matter. Photographing everyday events like putting on make up and the like. They also named an artist, Claude Closky, who makes assemblage pieces from grocery ads and magazines. So, I was sitting there and thinking, “Alright, some cohorts!” And then a little voice replied, “You are not unique.” And for the most part I would agree.

I have to go on a bit of a tangent to explain this part of my discussion with myself. A while back my family and I had an AWESOME discussion in regards to original ideas. I argued, and was the only one at the table that was on my side, that there was only one original thought. Believing that one thing leads to the next and that we are all connected, how could I not? My father pointed to my art and my ideas and told me I was selling myself short. I told him that it makes my art and my job so much more beautiful. It is made up of all of me and all of everyone else (past and present) all at the same moment. What could be better than that?

So, the thoughts I had today, after wondering if I would find my present day cohorts, was, “do I want to find my present day cohorts?” Artists survive on being original. It takes a great deal of effort to impress a viewer and even more to get them to stay a while or come back later. What would happen to my psyche if I found someone who did art exactly like me? I think I might be shattered. I know she/he is out there. But, for now, I don’t want to find them. That is so against everything I believe! I’m such a hypocrite sometimes.

The Red Door Gallery and Collective

This post is a bit late, but I wanted to put it out there anyway. The piece that is shown in the post below “Oh won’t you be my neighbor,” is currently hung at the Red Door Gallery in Oakland, CA.

Check out there blog here for a little bit of an inside look at what its like to start a collective. I’m a member, so I will probably be ranting and raving about it as time goes by.

October’s show is a paired show I’m planning with Heidi Forrsell. The title is “Look at me looking at you,” and studies the obsession with both the self and the other. The RDG is in a pretty big warehouse, so there is also what is called an Outer Space that Heidi and I will be curating and hanging work relating to the subject of “Self and Other.” Should be fun.

I was out of town for the sneak preview opening for the gallery (that’s what I hung Mister Rogers in), but will be there for the Grand Opening on October 3rd! I am learning just how much work goes into being part of a collaboration and running a gallery. I think, in the end, it will all be worth it. No matter what, I know I am learning so so so very much.