She is driven by her appreciation for the analog slowness of printmaking, the problem solving challenge of each project, the meditative quality of it, the desire to be better without the distracting tendencies toward (too much) comparison | Photos by Compelling Story
Artist linoleum curls into thin ribbons as she cuts subtle and intricate detail into the material by removing bits, shavings, and strips of it a little at a time. She’s literally drawing with a blade, and literally sculpting from the material to create a relief.
Then on print day she carefully rolls oil-based ink onto the relief, presses a sheet of hand-torn cotton-rag paper, bringing together ink, the block containing the relief, and paper to produce the image she’d started to envision before the first cuts were made.
Lauren Crowe is a printmaker living in The High Country just outside of Boone where she produces art pieces that could be described as combination painting and sculpture.
The most important question I can think of to ask at the moment is “Why? It all seems so difficult.”
The Love of Process
She recognizes there are quicker, more immediate, more lucrative media to make art that some people might be happy to buy. But she’s not as concerned about those more convenient outcomes as she is with the process the art requires of her. And with what little I know of her discerning collectors, they understand the vast difference between a digital print of artwork and a printmaking piece that is itself an original work of art. The handmade nature of each print is evident in elements such as the textures created by woodgrain, ink and layering.
“I try not to take myself too seriously but I do take the art and the process very seriously,” she says, demonstrating (without really trying) just how much she can “geek out” on the process. She throws around words as if I’m supposed to understand a syllable of what she means.
What I did pick up on were her appreciation for the analog slowness of printmaking, the problem solving challenge of each project, the meditative quality of it, the desire to be better without the distracting tendencies toward (too much) comparison.
“I almost love the process as much as the finished pieces,” she says.
Born in the Mountains
Like her art, Lauren had her beginnings in the mountains of North Carolina.
“I grew up in the very southwestern corner of North Carolina so I grew up in the mountains in a rural area where there wasn’t a huge opportunity for exposure to art,” she says. “So each year I looked forward to going to the fall festival in Brasstown. It was a family tradition. My mother, my grandmother, my sister and I would eat a big breakfast and go make a day of it. Each year I was inspired by the artists there. I remember turning to my mom once and saying ‘One day I want that to be me.’”
It wasn’t until her junior year of her graphic design program at Appalachian State University that Lauren made her first prints for a printmaking class.
Almost immediately the process felt like home, much like the mountains of The High Country have felt to her since moving here several years ago.
“I grew up in North Carolina, and it will always be home to me, so being able to wake up in a place like this is pretty special. I take the Blue Ridge Parkway every day to work passing an overlook with fog over the mountains and with the sun rising. You can’t get much better than that.”
The Viaduct Series
And her latest project reflects this love of The High Country and also a love of subtlety her printmaking allows.
She says her favorite part of her latest work is the distant mountains subtly tucked in at the edge of the print—perhaps much the way the eye might perceive those mountains as one travels south on the Blue Ridge Parkway just before reaching the Linn Cove Viaduct.
She recognizes the near cliché the Viaduct has become after countless times depicted by artists and photographers and in brochures about The High Country. And this is perhaps what drove her to begin the Viaduct project several months ago as she made those first cuts in the wood block.
Those initial cuts in early April would be the first steps at the beginning of a journey of discovery—of the materials, of her skill, and of the landscape she calls home—and one of many such journeys she’s taken on her years-long path toward mastery of printmaking. Her challenge in this particular artistic endeavor–the Viaduct edition–was to draw out nuance and make the highly-recognizable Viaduct somehow a new thing to behold.
BUY LAUREN’S LATEST WORK @ THE WHITE CROWE You can also visit Common Good Co and view Lauren’s work in this downtown shop that curates the finest artists and artisans in The High Country.
“I wanted to do something local that people could relate to, but I wanted them to understand it in a new way. Really that’s what an artist is I guess–someone who wants to see and communicate reality from a different perspective,” Lauren says. “This is what makes my work important to me, and why it’s also special when there’s an opportunity to display and sell my work locally. It’s an opportunity for me to hear about the personal connections people have to this place depicted in my art. I love to hear their stories and I hope that my work is not only well-crafted but also a way of transporting them back to good memories. It’s another good way of sharing a smile.”
