Lesley University College of Art and Design​

Studio mentor: Andy Graydon

Faculty advisor: Deb Todd Wheeler

Graphic Designer: Grete Rokstad

Video engineer: Roger Bratseth

 

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ARTIST STATEMENT LAURIE VESTØL, JANUARY 2024

Islander and artist, I am concerned with marine ecology. My background is in the monumental work of landscape architecture and city planning, which requires large scale collaborations. In the studio, I embrace a softer, intrepid approach to the landscape and tease out collaboration in the unlikeliest of places. On isolated skerries, my regenerative interventions link birds, lichen, and bedrock. At my boathouse gallery, my installations invite community and connection.

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My art practice includes kayaking in the archipelago of south-east Norway in the early morning, a ritual I undertake with my community of friends. In the cold Nordic landscape, we paddle the fjord, following its strange polyrhythmic pulse of wind, tide, and light. I attend to fleeting glimpses of deep cliffs and swarms of poisonous jellyfish. Somewhere beyond the confines of consciousness I brush up against elusive beings moving in the dark and imagine the mental shapes of alien nomads traveling the sea.

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I translate this sensory fieldwork into performance, video, sound, and installation. My immersive works explore the possibilities of interspecies intimacy, including questions of non-human perception, and the tensions of corporeal autonomy. Confronting my own impulse to manipulate the landscape, my work creates opportunities to encounter our own bodies in relation to the land in ways that allude to mystical traditions and belief systems.