Laura Letinsky facts for kids

Laura L. Letinsky (born 1962) is a talented artist and a professor. She teaches in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. Laura Letinsky lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Her art explores what photographs mean and how they make us think. She often challenges ideas about home life, gender, and what we buy. She is also a Guggenheim fellow, which is a special award for artists.

Learning and Teaching

Laura Letinsky was born in Winnipeg, Canada. She studied art at the University of Manitoba and later at Yale School of Art. She earned her first degree in 1986 and her master's degree in 1991. In 2000, she received the important Guggenheim Fellowship. She also got the Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship in 2001. Today, she is a professor of visual arts at the University of Chicago.

Her Artistic Work

Early Photography Projects

In the 1990s, Laura Letinsky mostly photographed couples. One of her series was called Venus Inferred. This work looked at how old religious art ideas changed into modern ideas about love. She also started thinking about how photos are made and how people see them. Artists like Walker Evans, Garry Winogrand, and Diane Arbus influenced her.

Later, Laura Letinsky began taking pictures of still lifes. A still life is a picture of objects that do not move, like fruit or flowers. She was inspired by old Dutch-Flemish paintings. She found that still lifes let her explore ideas about home and small details. She realized these pictures could also show bigger social ideas. She wanted to show that what a picture is about is not always the same as what it shows.

In 2004, her important series Hardly More Than Ever was shown. This made her well-known as a modern artist.

Art in the 2010s

In 2009, Letinsky took a break from photography. She started working with ceramics, fabrics, and words. She wanted to explore how photos are both images and real objects. She returned to photography in 2010. She then started a new still-life series called Ill Form and Void Full. In this work, she showed how one picture can lead to another.

In 2019, she showed her series To Want For Nothing in Chicago. For these pictures, she used cutouts from magazines and ads. She made new images that explored how shapes tell stories. She also looked at how many images we see every day.

Recent Art in the 2020s

In 2022, Laura Letinsky continued her work with ceramics. She created a new series of porcelain sculptures called Preparing for Flowers. She wanted to make things with her hands and take a break from digital life. She was inspired by kintsugi, a Japanese art. Kintsugi is about repairing broken pottery with gold, celebrating its history.

Who Loves the Sun Her newest photography series is called Who Loves the Sun. She made most of these photos in France in 2023. This series goes back to traditional still life photography. An exhibition of this work opened in New York City in 2024. It was called For, And Because Of…. In these photos, Letinsky used natural and artificial light. She photographed objects like vases and glassware from the house where she stayed. She also used items left by other artists and plants growing nearby.

Laura Letinsky says she photographs ordinary things. She does this in a way that makes you question what the camera shows. She also wants her pictures to be visually pleasing and connect to other senses. She has also made tintypes (an old type of photo) from iPhone images. These works connect to the past and show how time and perspective can change.

Molosco Dinnerware In 2024, Laura Letinsky launched Molosco. This is a collection of porcelain dinnerware. She started working on it in 2010. The Molosco collection is inspired by the mollusk, a creature with a shell. This idea shows how the dishes are practical but also unique. They celebrate the artist's hand and challenge ideas of perfect things. Molosco was launched in Chicago in March 2024.

Letinsky and Molosco have also worked with a cooking studio called Txa Txa Club. They created special dinners where the food was inspired by the Molosco collection.

Solo Exhibitions

• "For, and Because Of...", Yancey Richardson Gallery, NYC, 2024
• "About Things", Four Seasons Hotel, Chicago, IL, 2024
• "Preparing for Flowers" (ceramics), Tracey Morgan Gallery, Ashville, NC, 2022
• "To Want For Nothing" exhibition at Yancey Richardson in New York, 2019
• "Hardly More Than Ever" at the Renaissance Society, 2004

Art Collections

Her artwork is part of many important collections. These include the Getty Museum, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Art Institute of Chicago.