Echo Scholarship Auction – Lauren Payne
LAUREN PAYNE
– Echo Scholarship Auction –
Lunar Glister, 2012
digital print and neon
24″ x 36″
Estimated Value: $1,000
Lauren’s Echo Scholarship is intended for an artist who is attending or has graduated from Cranbrook Academy of Art, her alma matter.
By combining elements such as photography, video, and performance art, artist Lauren Payne maintains a freedom to implement different mediums in order to craft site-specific, ritualistic work that strives to engage both herself and her audiences to explore themes that are “about connecting and finding the spiritual relationship with nature.”
In Lauren’s work, a sole implementation of photography can be limiting, so she strives to utilize “whatever medium is most appropriate to convey what she is trying to say,” and the evolution of her practice has, in itself, become a core philosophy. To create a “natural response” to her stories, Lauren adds both time and audio elements to create dynamic and “multi-sensory” experiences, the impacts of which affect both artist and viewer; and these shared experiences, she contends, are as sacred as the human/nature connections she explores.
Hailing from Ohio, Lauren’s participation in ACRE’s residency program was as crucial to launching her Chicago-based career as it was to her general practice (but it should be noted that she continues to feel ACRE’s impact). After graduating from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2011, the decision to attend ACRE seemed a natural choice. There, Lauren was free to explore human interactions with nature and the ideas that have become defining themes in her body of work. Equally important, however, is ACRE’s continued support of its artists at the completion of their residencies. Because of the friendships and communities that are forged amongst residency artists each year and the ongoing exhibition programs in which they participate, Lauren believes that ACRE has provided her with a wonderful and supportive point of entry into Chicago’s artistic community, an opportunity for which she is truly grateful. Lauren succinctly describes ACRE as enlightening – quite a fitting descriptor given the meditative, brilliant, and sublime qualities of her own work.
Taylor Peterson