Lauren Fensterstock facts for kids

Lauren Fensterstock is an American artist who lives and works in Portland, Maine. She is also a writer, a curator (someone who organizes art shows), a critic (someone who writes about art), and a teacher. Her artwork has been shown in many places across the United States, like the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and the Portland Museum of Art. Her art can also be found in special collections in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Becoming an Artist: Lauren's Education

Lauren Fensterstock studied art at two different colleges. She earned her first art degree, a Bachelor of Fine Arts, from Parsons School of Design in New York City in 1997. Later, in 2000, she received her second degree, a Master of Fine Arts, from SUNY New Paltz in New York.

Lauren's Work in the Art World

Lauren Fensterstock does many things in the art world. She teaches art, helps organize art shows, and writes about art.

Teaching Art to Students

Currently, Fensterstock teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She has also taught at other art schools, including the Maine College of Art and the New Hampshire Institute of Art. For a year, she was even a special professor at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. Besides teaching, she also helped manage the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program at the Maine College of Art for two years.

Organizing Art Exhibitions

Fensterstock has worked as a curator, which means she helps put together art exhibitions. She was the temporary director at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the Maine College of Art. She also directed the Hay Gallery in Portland, Maine, and helped develop exhibitions for the Saco Museum. She has been a guest curator for many art shows across the country.

Writing About Art

Lauren Fensterstock writes for different art magazines, such as Metalsmith Magazine and Art New England. She also writes essays for art catalogs. For a few years, she was the editor for Art New England in Maine and an associate editor for Arts Guide Portland.

Exploring Lauren Fensterstock's Art Series

Lauren Fensterstock creates art that makes people think about nature, beauty, and how things change over time.

Precious Heirlooms: Art That Changes (2004-2010)

In her early work, Lauren used her skills from studying metalsmithing and jewelry. She made a series called Precarious Heirlooms. For these pieces, she used unusual materials like potatoes, bananas, and soap. She would then place precious stones and pearls into them.

The interesting part was that these artworks changed over time. The soap would dry and crack, the potatoes would shrink and grow sprouts, and the bananas would rot. Lauren documented these changes, calling them What Happens. This showed how beauty can be temporary.

Third Nature: Nature in a Box (2007-2014)

In her series Third Nature, Lauren used a technique called quilling. This is where you curl and shape thin strips of paper to make detailed designs. She combined this with materials like Plexiglas and charcoal to create sculptures that were often enclosed in boxes or cases.

This series was inspired by her own garden. She started thinking about how people try to control and shape nature, and how gardens have been designed throughout history. Her Third Nature artworks often show "monochromatic iterations of nature and gardens" that are carefully contained.

Large-Scale Installations (2008-2014)

Building on her Third Nature ideas, Lauren started creating much larger artworks called installations. These pieces were designed for specific spaces in museums and galleries, like the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. These bigger works also showed influences from famous artists like Donald Judd and Robert Smithson.

Grottoes: Artificial Caves (2014-2018)

Lauren's Grottoes series moved away from the paper designs of Third Nature. Instead, she started making "cavernous pieces that imitate stalagmites and stalactites" (the rock formations found in caves).

She explained that she became fascinated with garden grottoes, which are artificial caves built in gardens. These grottoes mix nature with human design. Sometimes, in the 18th century, people would decorate real caves with shells or other ornaments. Lauren wanted to explore this idea of blending nature and culture. For this series, she used new materials like shells coated in black rubber to create her dark, cave-like sculptures. Her first piece in this series, Stalagmite, was shown in 2015.

The totality of time lusters the dusk (2019–Present)

In 2020, Lauren Fensterstock was asked to create a special artwork for an exhibition called Forces of Nature at the Smithsonian Museum. Her piece, titled The totality of time lusters the dusk, was inspired by an old book from the 1500s called the Augsburg Book of Miracles.

Selected Exhibitions

Lauren Fensterstock's art has been shown in many exhibitions. Here are some of them:

Solo Exhibitions (One Artist Shows)

• 2015 Lauren Fensterstock, Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
• 2015 Stalagmite, PULSE Project at PULSE, NY, NY
• 2014 New Work, Lauren Fensterstock, Independent Art Projects, North Adams, MA
• 2014 Preparatory Drawings, Aucocisco, Portland, ME
• 2013 Lauren Fensterstock, Sienna Gallery, Lenox, MA
• 2013 The Celebration of Formal Effects, Whether Natural or Artificial, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI
• 2011 Incidents of Garden Displacement, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME
• 2010 Mound, Sienna Gallery, Lenox, MA
• 2010 Of Groves, Labyrinths, Dedals, Cabinets, Cradles, Close-Walks, Galleries, Pavilions, Portico's, Lanterns, and Other Relievo's: of Topiary and Hortulan Architecture, Walker Contemporary, Boston, MA
• 2009 New Projects, Washington Art Association, Washington Depot, CT
• 2008 Parterre, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME
• 2008 Unearthed, Sienna Gallery, Lenox, MA
• 2007 A Third Nature, Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, ME
• 2006 Lauren Fensterstock, University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, ME
• 2005 Dearest, Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, ME
• 2004 Castles in Spain, The Hay Gallery, Portland, ME
• 2003 Precious Heirlooms, Center For Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME
• 2001 Otherwise Portraits, Edward Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College, Providence, RI

Two or Three Person Exhibitions

• 2014 Lauren Fensterstock and Susie Ganch, PULSE Miami, with Sienna Patti Contemporary
• 2011 Two Takes: One Space, Lauren Fensterstock and Steve Wiman, Austin Contemporary, Austin, TX
• 2011 Lauren Fensterstock and John Bisbee, Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, ME
• 2008 Lauren Fensterstock, Dylan McManus, Justin Novak, Dorsky Gallery, Long Island City, NY
• 2002 Decisions & Revisions: Lauren Fensterstock & Aaron T Stephan, Hay Gallery, Portland, ME
• 2000 Fairy Tale: Roy Kortik, Rachel Sekelman, Lauren Fensterstock, Elsa Mott Ives Gallery, NY, NY

Group Exhibitions (Many Artists)

• 2015 Directors Cut, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
• 2014 Recurrence, Fridman Gallery, New York, NY
• 2014 Surface, Stephen D. Paine Gallery at Mass Art, Boston, MA
• 2013 Piecework, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
• 2012 Dubh: Dialogues in Black, Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
• 2012 Maine Biennial, Center For Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME
• 2012 Maine Women Pioneers, University of New England, Portland, ME
• 2011 Dubh: Dialogues in Black, American Irish Historical Society, New York, NY
• 2011 Buds, Blooms, & Berries: Plants in Science, Culture, & Art, Everhart Museum, Scranton, PA
• 2011 Decadence and Disarray, Sienna Gallery, Lenox, MA
• 2011 Field of Vision: Artists Explore Place, Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI
• 2010 Sacred and Profane, Portsmouth Museum of Fine Art, Portsmouth, NH
• 2008 The Thinking Body, Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, CA
• 2008 The Thinking Body, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR
• 2008 New Natural History, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
• 2007 In Situ, Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery, Mass Art, Boston, MA
• 2007 Laced With History, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI
• 2007 Marriage of True Minds, University of New England Art Gallery, Portland, ME
• 2006 Landscapes 2006, Beach Hill Farm, College of the Atlantic, Mount Desert Isle, ME
• 2006 Maine Biennial, Center For Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME
• 2005 Everything But Paper Prayers, Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston, MA
• 2005 Precious Little, Albany International Airport, Albany, NY
• 2005 Touchstones, Blum Gallery, College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, ME
• 2005 Portland Biennial, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
• 2004 Exposing Scarlet, The Mills Gallery, Boston Center For the Arts, Boston, MA
• 2004 Exquisite Corpse, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME

Where You Can Find Her Art: Public Collections

Lauren Fensterstock's artwork is part of several public art collections, meaning you can find her pieces in these places:

• Portland Museum of Art
• Bowdoin College Museum of Art
• Fidelity Maine General Medical Center
• Ogunquit Museum of American Art
• Tiffany & Co
• University of Maine Museum of Art

Awards and Recognitions

Lauren Fensterstock has received several awards and honors for her work:

• Named one of the Top Nine Artists under 40 in Miami by Artsy, 2014
• Artist Fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission, 2010
• Good Idea Grant from the Maine Arts Commission in 2004, 2006, and 2008
• Creative Project Award from SUNY New Paltz, 1999