Laura Semro
sometimes i look like you (2021)
My art and mental health are inextricable. Transient feelings obsessively repeat in inky mantras, my relationships stick to the wall until the tape fails, and the buzzing in my ears steps into characters that sit on my windowsill. I've discovered growth is a tricky thing when my primary coping mechanisms are made for public for public consumption, but personal progress and creation are irrevocable tied together for me now.
I like to draw, print, and write in bright primary and secondary colors and deep blacks on materials taht are as incidental and transient as the emotions they (often haphazardly) portray: construction paper, found objects, old free books from the library, newsprint, pages town from art books, masking tape. I can't be precious with my art because if it were made to last, then the mundane (life-altering) moments that inspire it would be forced to last with it. And we can't have that. A level of absurdity and of humor are necessary—if my work becomes too serious then it loses a feeling of authenticity. I consider most of what I do to be self-portraiture; whether traces or only symbols, my identity is constantly rotating. I am a caricature, I am haunted by spirits (except they're kind of nice sometimes), I am friends with blobs, I can't shake cycles, manic repetition, trios of anything and everything. I'm a poet words peek out behind limbs and lines all of the time. There's tensing between wanting to overshare and wanting to obscure. It's all rooted in constant change and constant reversion in my relationship with self, others, serendipity, and struggle.