PROFILE

Lauren Dyer:
Studying Art and Artists

Lauren Dyer, Point of Origin, 2001; fabric, paint, ink, embroidery, encaustic wax, sand; 7 by 15 by 12 inches. Photo: Gugger Petter. Courtesy of the American Craft Museum.

How artists support themselves, find a community in which they feel supported, and arrange their lives to make art: these are issues M.F.A. student Lauren Dyer has been mulling over. Meanwhile, she's been creating fabric sculptures: sewn, stuffed with sand, and painted, drawn on, embroidered, or beaded.

"Having time and space to focus on artwork is what generates creativity," says Dyer. After five years working in arts administration by day and logging studio time at night, Dyer found the time and space she needed to develop her work by going back to school. She focused first on technique and discipline as a core student at North Carolina's Penland School of Crafts (1998-2000), and now she's concentrating on ideas and theory at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.

Lauren Dyer, Untitled (detail), 2001; fabric, sand.

An installation of Dyer's sculptures won an honorable mention in 2001 in the American Craft Museum's first Horizon Award competition for students in craft media, co-sponsored by Hunter Douglas Window Fashions.

Plucky, 2000; fabric, paint, ink, embroidery, sand; 4 by 3 by 2 inches. Photo: Tom Mills.

Proliferate, 2000; fabric, paint, ink, embroidered thread, sand, metal; 7 by 11 by 2 inches overall. Photo: Tom Mills.

Untitled, 2001; wood, encaustic wax, paper, ink, beads; 18 by 20 by 3 inches.

Untitled, detail