Experiencing Somatic Art
Week of March 2, 2024
Join Lauren Elder for a journey of discovery and revelation using pastels and chalk, working with both hands, through guided meditation with eyes closed.
This is a process that is both playful and surprising.
Lauren Elder is an award-winning environmental artist and designer who develops place-making projects with and for host communities. Her practice dances on the border between landscape design and public art and includes small parks, school and community gardens and small structures. She is a Spanish speaker and works throughout Latin America and in the San Francisco Bay Area. When not in the field, narrative drawing series have become her principal medium. Elder received her BA in Fine Art/Sculpture (UCLA) with further studies in Landscape Architecture (UCB-Extension). She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Eureka/Fleishhacker Fellowship for Sculpture, three Isadora Duncan Awards for Visual Design, multiple NEA grants, two SF Bay Guardian Critics’ “Best of Year” awards, three Potrero Nuevo Environmental Awards, California Arts Council Individual Artist Award among others. Individual artworks have been exhibited at the SF Contemporary Jewish Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, UCB Art Museum, Walker Art Museum, Moscow General University (Russia), the Havana Biennia as well as in smaller galleries and cultural centers in the Bay Area and beyond. Elder’s artworks are in the permanent collections of the Oakland Museum of California, the David Brower Center, and the Tessie Cleveland Social Services Corporation.