LAUREN TUCCI
Kharon (Three Sisters), Ceramic, paint, 32" x 80" x 24", 2017

Lauren Tucci was born in Pittsburgh, PA, and now lives & works in Cedar Rapids, IA. Her ceramic and mixed-media works illustrate the artist's captivation with hypnopompic hallucinations (semiconscious imagery immediately preceding waking up). Human, animal, and non-living objects become symbols in investigations about the self and microsociology. She is most interested in how individuals derive meaning from these amalgamations and what might be gathered from the collective unconscious.

Her works have been featured in various publications including Ceramics Monthly and have been exhibited throughout the United States and in Japan. She is the Gallery Assistant and Inventory Manager at Gilded Pear Gallery and her studio is located at the Iowa Ceramics Center and Glass Studio, where she previously attended as a resident artist. She received her Associates Degree in Art at the Community College of Allegheny County and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Ceramics at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.

In her own words:

Inspired by artists of the Surrealist and Symbolist movements, my art originates from personal experience in connection to fictional universes. It stems from perceived realities in relation to how we derive meaning through everyday interpreted symbolism and subconscious thoughts rooted as deeply as one's dream state. This body of work objectifies personal emotions and conditions in the form of recognizable imagery, sometimes disjunctive or mise en scène. Framed instances in installations become linked chaos, much like dreams in a non-linear narrative.

I sculpt human and non-human fragments in delicate and callous themes to converse with our psyche, a reflection to conflict and relationships. Social status and contemporary themes of power and insecurities are illustrated without a demographic definition. I seek to remove conventional understandings of one's self and explore a discussion about personality purely through the imagery we define as a community.

Lauren Tucci's website