...In Laura Splan's mixed-media practice, the human body functions as both a physiological and cultural site: a conjunction of blood, bones, viruses and viscera masked by successive layers of social display, including clothing and makeup. To Splan, these accoutrements are means of hiding our bodies (as opposed to adorning them) and therefore serve as symptoms of a broader social discomfort with the unpleasant realities of human biology...
-- Rhizome

...Laura Splan examines the cultural trends and events that underscore the manner in which the fragility of the human body is taken for granted...
--Fiberarts

...Splan... swathes scientific observation in elegance... Splan's creations demand a double take—a second look that reveals the scholarly rigor behind the pretty surface...
--Discover Magazine

...Splan balances corporeal and incorporeal, wondrous and weird...
--SF Gate

Matray, Margaret, "Nicolaysen Art Museum opens four new exhibitions", Casper Star-Tribune, Sep 30, 2011
...Through various materials, imagery and types of artwork, Splan looks at the duality of comfort and discomfort and the ambivalence we have toward our own biological condition... [ Read on Web ] [ Exhibition Views ]

Rafferty, Rebecca, "Extreme Materials 2", City Newspaper, Oct 26, 2011
...a gossamer dress made of cosmetic facial peel, a gel that retains impressions of pores and hairs, and is embroidered with the molecular structure of serotonin, the neurotransmitter associated with feelings of well-being, sleep, and sex.... [ Read on Web ]

Sklar, Julia, "'Extreme Materials 2': An eye-opening new exhibit", University of Rochester Campus Times, Oct 27, 2011
...Splan's fashion piece was made from cosmetic facial peel that she covered her body in and then peeled off in large enough sheets to sew a dainty nightgown... [ Read on Web ]

Groeger, Lena, "Blood and lace: Laura Splan's artwork will make you look – twice", Scienceline, January 25, 2011
...Splan is on the forefront of a group of artists exploring the territory between science and art, said McFadden. He thinks the two disciplines, while artificially separated, intrinsically share the same process of creativity... [ Read on Web ]

Rossbauer, Maria, "Die Schönheit der Viren", Die Tageszeitung, December 18/19, 2010
In German
[ Read PDF ]

Swinkels, Dorothé, “Onbehaaglijke schoonheid”, Textiel Plus, Summer 2010
In Dutch
[ Read JPG ]

Angier, Natalie, "Of Compost, Molecules and Insects, Art Is Born", The New York Times, May 4, 2010
...Laura Splan, a Brooklyn-based artist and certified phlebotomist, decorates wallpaper with her own blood. On first seeing the wallpaper, viewers have "a pleasant visual engagement" with it... [ Read on Web ]

Lopeman, Elizabeth, "Domestic Subversion", American Craft, Dec 2009 / Jan 2010
...Laura Splan disturbs our notions of beauty and femininity by crafting traditionally feminine objects out of unpredictable materials...
[ Read PDF ]

Crutchfield, Whitney, “Laura Splan: Body of Evidence”, Fiberarts, January/February 2009, p.80
...Shocking, sexy and uncomfortable are all words that could be used to describe the anatomical art of Laura Splan...
[ Read JPG ]

Davies, Stacy, “Macramé Made Hip”, Inland Empire Weekly, February 2009
...Laura Splan's "Vigilant Series" of circular hook rugs are the premiere visual in the show, and while the 11 shaggy mats of various diameter... might recall some whimsical thing your sister (like mine) made when you were growing up... [ Read on Web ]

Munuera, Ivan Lopez, “¿Es Posible Un Picasso De Los Tapetes De Crochet?”, Pasajes Diseno, December 2008
In Spanish
[ Read PDF ]

Hicks, Bob, "Manufractured at the Museum of Contemporary Craft", The Oregonian, September 13, 2008
...By far the exhibit's most provocative work is by Laura Splan, who begins with traditional embroidery patterns and gives them a clinical, sometimes macabre twist. She stitches doilies in the biological patterns of lethal viruses... [ Read on Web ]

Coburn, Tyler, "Pretty on the Inside", Rhizome News, April 30, 2008
...In Laura Splan's mixed-media practice, the human body functions as both a physiological and cultural site: a conjunction of blood, bones, viruses and viscera masked by successive layers of social display, including clothing and makeup... [ Read on Web ]

Sood, Sheena, "Extreme Embroidery @ the Museum of Arts and Design", Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, Feb 2008
...Laura Splan's intricate, perfectly symmetrical, and outwardly decorative doilies, made of machine-embroidered rayon lace, actually depict viruses. Who knew herpes, HIV, and the flu were so incredibly beautiful?...[ Read on Web ]

Mestel, Rosie, “Medical Craft Madness”, Los Angeles Times, April 2008
...And we're especially partial to the delicate, knitted lace doilies of Laura Splan--each one in the shape of a virus. HIV, hepadna virus, SARS virus, flu virus, herpes virus--take your pick. (We like herpes virus best.)... [ Read on Web ]

Camhi, Leslie, "Let's Get Stitched: A radical take on an old art.", Village Voice, Nov 20, 2007
...they dig deep within the body, like Laura Splan, to uncover a range of emotions. (Splan's doilies… are uncannily mesmerizing and off-putting.) She and others included here reveal the unexpected versatility of a pastime long associated... [ Read on Web ]

Self, Dana, “Knit Happens: Raised in Craftivity ain’t your grandma’s crochet...”, The Pitch: Arts & Entertainment, Sept 20, 2007
...Laura Splan's work is some of the most intriguing in the exhibition. Her small installation of three latch-hooked "rug" pillows, titled "Zoloft," "Prozac" and "Thorazine," invites the viewer to cozy up to the happy promise of the drugs'... [ Read on Web ]

Baker, Kenneth, "The man works wonders with, yes, paint rollers", San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday, June 16, 2007
...a Laura Splan video whose apparent content changes both simply and startlingly moment by moment, as well as fabric pieces in which Splan toys cleverly with intimate comforts and anxieties... [ Read on Web ]

Obermeyer, Lindsay, “Arts and Sciences”, Fiberarts, Summer 2007
...Laura Splan examines the cultural trends and events that underscore the manner in which the fragility of the human body is taken for granted... [ Read JPG ]

Ornes, Stephen, "Art: Of Doilies and Disease", Discover Magazine, Reviews, February 2007
...Splan... swathes scientific observation in elegance... Splan's creations demand a double take—a second look that reveals the scholarly rigor behind the pretty surface... embroidery is begotten by blood-borne disease... [ Read JPG ]

Valenzuela, América, "Medicina en la galería de arte”, EL MUNDO: Área de Salud, Saturday, October 7, 2006
In Spanish
[ Read on Web ]

Goe, Tara, "The Inside-Out Art of Laura Splan", Kitchen Sink, 2006
...few things are more alarming than realizing that the beautifully detailed wallpaper drawings you're swooning over have been drawn in the artist's own blood... [ Read JPG ]

Wiebe, Stacey, "Body of Art," VC Reporter: Art & Culture, September 22, 2005
...Splan's exploration of how medical devices or implants become part of the human body is an artistic demonstration of how the two converge... [ Read JPG ]

Berry, Colin, “SubAnatomy and Nathan Lynch,” Artweek, July / August 2005
...Trepidation, which the viewer slowly comprehended as a mirror-image video zoom of the artist's pricked finger, proved a mysterious, mesmerizing, animated Rorschach test... [ Read JPG ]

Valenzuela, América, "CIENCIA ILUSTRADA (II): Los artistas en el laboratorio", El Mundo: MEDICINA, Friday, July 15, 2005
In Spanish
[ Read on Web ]

Miles, Todd, "Seeing Red", 7x7 San Francisco Magazine, May 2005
...Splan cites the questions surrounding the world's first cloned sheep as her inspiration for wedding art with biology...
[ Read JPG ]

Bing, Alison, “Laura Splan: Femina Potens”, SF Gate: Art, March 2005
...Splan balances corporeal and incorporeal, wondrous and weird… strong solo shows by women artists such as this one are too often presented only during Women's History Month... [ Read on Web ]

Proulx, Mélissa, "Pop Culture: Maux d'hiver", Voir, February 10, 2005
In French
[ Read on Web ]

Bing, Alison, “Meat Show at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery”, Artweek, February 2005
...the show is stolen like a steak left alone with a crafty family pet by Laura Splan, who contributed the most immediately appealing and repellent pieces... [ Read JPG ]

Buckner, Clark, “Meat Show”, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Dec. 22-28, 2004
...Splan's pictures speak to the human condition as violent, fragile, and, above all, visceral. However, the show's focus is not particularly on gore but rather on questions of national identity and what it means to be American... [ Read on Web ]

Saldivar, Steve, “This Meat Can’t Be Beat”, Daily Californian, Thursday, December 2, 2004
...Splan… uses her own body to uncover the quiet horrors as of domestic life as well as the entrapment of the household. To the naked eye, Splan's work would be nothing more than beautiful wallpaper designed with difficult pattern... [ Read on Web ]

Davis, Virginia, “High Fiber”, Fiberarts, November/December 2004
...The doily, with its nostalgic evocation of middle-class gentility, becomes the marker of the biological hazards that have invaded everyday life... [ Read JPG ]

Polgar, Robi, "New American Talent – The 19th Exhibition", Austin Chronicle, August 6, 2004
...Even more than the political undercurrent of the art, the variety of media used by these artists is staggering. The unexpected reigns… There's blood as ink in the intricate Thought Patterns, by Laura Splan... [ Read on Web ]

Campbell, Rob, "Natural Refinement: Organic takes art by the roots and (gently) pulls", VC Reporter, December 15, 2003
...There is nothing at all aloof about Laura Splan's unnervingly beautiful and unquestionably alive monotone paintings—monotone because she paints solely with her own blood, composing directly from her fingertips on watercolor paper... [ Read on Web]

Cheng, DeWitt, "Introductions South at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art", Artweek, October 2003
...Splan combines people and medical paraphernalia into stinging image poems melding, à la Cronenberg, 'beauty and horror, comfort and discomfort... Blood Scarf extends the circulatory system outside the body into a fashion accessory... [ Read JPG ]

Brenneman, Christine, "Illegal Art at SFMOMA Artists Gallery", Artweek, September 2003
...a homespun and wonderfully bizarre piece... Far from the image of pills mass-produced, cold and inhuman, Splan's versions looked like something to snuggle up with on a chilly evening... [ Read JPG ]

Helfand, Glen, "Pet And Touch: Two digital artists bring the organic body onto the computer", SF Gate, July 2002
...a touch screen filled with an image of pinkish skin... When one touched the... surface again, a few more red circles appeared... The cause-and-effect reactions were an addictive... meditation on the concept of touch, disease and healing... [ Read on Web ]