Bio
Jon Laustsen is a Rhode Island-based artist and educator whose hand-built sculptures and mixed media installations have reflected issues of certainty, community, labor and home over the past 15 years. Laustsen’s work often plays with internal and external perspectives while alternating between literal, metaphorical and materially-suggestive connections across time.
Laustsen is the recipient of numerous fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally, including site-specific projects at The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, MN), Newark Arts Festival (Newark, NJ), Beals Preserve (Southborough, MA), The David Winton Bell Gallery, The Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology, and AS220 (Providence, RI). Laustsen holds an MFA from The Rhode Island School of Design, a BA in Philosophy from Bethel University (MN) and currently teaches at Brown University and the University of Rhode Island.
Statement
The closer one gets to the core, the further they may seem from the surface.
My fascination with sculpture stems from a desire to delve deep beneath the surface and explore hidden structures that support and shape our world. The current body of work is suggestive of statuesque-like wind-turbines as culturally significant artifacts reflecting simultaneously a contemporary present and distant future. These re-imagined wind turbine forms, created with hand-applied concrete, plaster, foam, clay and paint, emerge from my practice as a repeating motif for embodying varying themes of loss, regenerative energy, and time.
CV
Contact
Please email for any inquiries:
jonlaustsen@gmail.com