Be sure to make it out on Friday December 4th for the First Friday art tour at Stripe featuring the illustrations of  Laura Vollset. The event will be sponsored by Serendipity Spreads who will be featuring different hors d’ouevres made with their local jams and sauces. Join us from 5-9 pm at Stripe in downtown Santa Cruz, 107 Walnut Ave.

LAURA VOLLSET

About the Art:

My work ranges from illustration, to fine art and design. I work in both digital and traditional media, depending on the nature of the project. All the pieces in this show were done using traditional techniques. They range from studies in pen and ink, to etchings, to watercolor paintings, to colored pencil on film.

About the Artist:

I have always drawn. The process of drawing and painting has always made me happy. My earliest work, the famously avant-garde “spoon men” series, consisted of scrawled pictures of cutlery with arms and legs.  My parents coped well, and only complained after I had lost most of their best cutlery and covered the kitchen walls with drawings of frantically waving spoon people. Eating dinner with your fingers, while being mocked by pictures of dancing silverware was, they said “unnecessary and creepy.”

After my thousandth “spoon man,” however even I began get the sense that perhaps it was time to move on from adding arms and legs to inanimate objects. Since then I’ve branched out and hope that I’ve improved my technical skills somewhat. Although I studied English Literature at university, I kept drawing. When I entered grad-school, I kept drawing. When I quit grad-school and wept pathetically into my Cheerios about how worthlessly unemployable I was, I kept drawing.

I recently completed a graduate certificate in Science Illustration at UCSC. I have  worked for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, The Monterey bay Aquarium, The Environmental Studies Department at UCSC, Earth Magazine and Cornell University. I will shortly be undertaking work for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

I still draw and it still makes me happy. I hope you enjoy the show.