Denise Laws

Artist Statement:

My work is narrated through a mixture of referencing advertisements, magazine images, text, photographs, sewing, drawing and a variety of re-appropriated ephemera. I then develop and expand upon into a series of constructs. As a whole, the work is symbiotic: the series are out-growths of each other and often relating conceptually. More often, my work focuses both on form as well as the humor inherent in what we wear, acquire and in our man-made environments and their broad spectrum of interiors and exteriors. With my continuing interest in textures, fabric and materials, I often allow the medium to drive the work I'm involved with. I am attempting to conjure an awakening, or reawakening of the ordinary and the commonplace, in my questioning of what is accepted as art, grounded in the modern artistic spirit of the "Ready Made". With the "Hair Color Theory Series", I transformed magazine images of hair, in a variety of styled and manipulated states, and created a series of textural Dada inspired imagery in the spirit of Meret Oppenheim.

Bio:
Denise Laws, born, raised, lives and works in San Francisco. She received her BFA in the Interdisciplinary department at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2001, also awarded the San Francisco Art Institute Merit Scholarship. Denise’s work was among the selected student’s art in the 2001-2002 San Francisco Art Institute Catalog. She has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows at San Francisco Bay Area venues including, Bucheon Gallery, Southern Exposure, Limn Gallery, Extension of SF MOMA, Adobe Books and The Sonoma Museum of Visual Art. As well as CEPA Gallery in NY, Mesa Contemporary Art Center in Arizona. In 2008, Laws was selected to participated in The Hearts in San Francisco, benefiting the General Hospital Medical Center. In 1999, her work was featured in the literary journal Zyzzyva, a publication for writers and artists and honorable mention in Best of the Bay Guardian. Most recently, juried acceptance in Studio Visit Magazine 2012