Some people say they can do everything. 27-year-old New York based artist Lauren Lacey Slowik, is not one of those people. But the things she can do include, but are not limited to the following:

  • Photography
  • Drawing and typography
  • Cooking delicious food from recipes she makes off the top of her head (items include two-tier chocolate cake and roasted pork loin)
  • Creating clothes from a single cut of cloth in half an hour (did I mention that in her spare time she also tailors garments for Ivanka Trump?)
  • Playing a double bass (she used to be in a blue grass band)
  • Putting up walls all by her lonesome
  • Fixing computers
  • Gardening (i.e. resurrecting plants from the dead)

Don’t you just hate her already?

Tell me a bit about your art practice.
Scared and challenging. Every moment and thing has to be validated by a set of criteria that I did not create. Critics are designed to be ignored but my loudest critic is myself and a lot of things I create don’t make it past the cutting room floor. Not to get too Robert Frost on anyone, but my practice emerges like weeds, in places where I haven’t had the time and energy to stifle it. Cultivation is a luxury I’m slowly teaching myself to deserve.

What kind of background (formal or other) do you have in visual arts?
My training is in spite of art. I was forbidden from earning a fine arts degree and continue to be resentful of that fact. A BFA was deemed useless, a waste of money. Any training I’ve had has been scraped together from what I could reach. Luckily I got myself into a film and photography BS program that fancied itself an art degree. I had access to lots of smart, artsy professors with great ideas. Since I’ve moved to the city I’ve taken some sculpture courses from SVA, my favorite being a blacksmithing class in Red Hook taught by this awesome lady Marsha Trattner.

What kind of themes do you find yourself exploring?
Identity. Identity is a sticking point.

Name some things that inspire you, and tell me why.
True, valiant interest in something. For years I’ll convince myself that I am invested in an idea only to find that it doesn’t hold at the slightest of gales. That’s why the work I’m sharing with you is so valuable to me personally. I’ve kept this extremely immediate visual journal of my existence here. I’m learning things about myself that, frankly, without this technology I wouldn’t have been capable of learning. I’m just terrible at keep a written journal. My record is 6 months, with only one entry a week. So this blog I’ve kept and culled from is the single most valuable personal artifact I’ve ever made/had.

Tell me a bit about your current projects.
The thing I’m most excited about is a mini documentary I’m doing for my grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary. They lived in Pittsburgh for the majority of their lives and most of my 30+ cousins have never even been there. I’m traveling there in two weeks to document where my father and aunt and uncles grew up and what transpired there. Oral history and all that. And in July I’m premiering this little family history to a very discerning crowd. I’ll be posting it eventually.

What is it about New York that excites you?
The fact that I like New York despite itself. That I’ve found myself happy in a place I swore up and down that I’d never live.

Where can we visit you on the internet?
laurenlaceyslowik.com
laurenlacey.tumblr.com for visual things that interest me. A diary.





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