INFO: Biography
Laura Splan is a New York City based mixed media artist. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of California, Irvine where she originally studied Biological Sciences. She received her Master of Fine Art in Sculpture from Mills College in Oakland, CA. Her conceptually driven work employs a variety of materials and processes that usually have a feminine sensibility about them. Unsettling, biomedical imagery is foiled by more comfortable domestic imagery and craft processes. Likewise, the seemingly familiar and benign are subverted by the anatomical and biological. She often uses her own body in the production of materials for her work such as blood and discarded facial peel. She recently became a certified phlebotomist.
Her southern suburban upbringing in Tennessee nurtured her interest in the visual language of femininity, domesticity, and crafts. She explores that language as one that communicates via façade and designations of beauty and order in relation to the body or to the home. Her interest in science and medicine stems from a variety of experiences and interests. Both her father and sister worked for a company that manufactures surgical and medical products such as implants. This fostered her interest in medicine and gave her access to images and information she might otherwise not have had. Health epidemics, bio-terrorism, reality makeover shows, Botox parties, anti-microbial products, and pharmaceutical advertising all serve as fuel for inspiration for her work.
Splan has had solo exhibitions at the International Museum of Surgical Science (Chicago), the New York Hall of Science (NY, NY) and the Richmond Art Center (Richmond, CA). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Museum for Arts and Design (NY, NY), the Museum of Contemporary Craft (Portland, OR), and Caren Gloden Fine Art (NY, NY). She has been featured and interviewed on Spark* on KQED (San Francisco) and on Eight Forty-Eight on WBEZ (Chicago). She has been a visiting artist and lecturer at Maryland Institute College of Art, California College of Art, Cal Arts, San Francisco Art Institute, Stanford University, San Francisco Camerawork, and the New York Academy of Sciences. She was awarded a Jerome Foundation Travel & Study Grant for Visual Arts. Her work is included in the art collection of the University of California San Francisco Infectious Disease Department. Reviews of her work have appeared in Artweek, Discover Magazine, Village Voice, Craft, and Rhizome. Splan’s work has been positioned within a variety of curatorial themes including science, medicine, craft, ritual, and feminism.