Laura Lau Klein has held creativity and adornment closely in life. Their work as a painter and regard for living spurred them to study Art History, Art, and Anthropology at the University of Delaware. Their time in university didn’t quell their curiosity but inspired it further, leading them to pursue an artist practice while traveling. Landing in Western North Carolina, Lau’s appreciation for material culture blossomed, learning natural dying and basketry, woodcarving, and silversmithing. This passion took them to Penland School of Craft, the John C. Campbell Folk School, and, most recently, the Professional Crafts program at Haywood Community College to study jewelry. Upon graduation, they were awarded the 2024 Windgate-Lamar Fellowship Award through the Center for Craft to nurture their craft practice. Lau now lives in Asheville, NC, where their jewelry and mixed media work shows a reverence for the natural world and the human role within it.
Laura Lau Klein
she/they
Asheville, NC, USA
“Adornment is an act of conversation with ourselves and an expression of ourselves to the world around us. As a jewelry artist, I merge recycled metals, repurposed materials, wax carvings, and responsibly harvested plants through fabrication and casting. By combining carefully considered materials and traditional jewelry techniques, I communicate a sense of awe and wonder inspired by connection. My adornments show how intertwined we are with our surroundings, the land, and our past.”
How does your work relate to the theme connection?
“What we wear expresses our internal landscape, acting as a connection between the internal and external. The relationship between the wearer and their jewelry inspires my work. When someone sees themselves in a piece, it creates feelings of belonging to self and one’s surroundings.
Loam No. 2 is inspired by the sense of empowerment I feel when I get dressed up to spend time in the woods. The wooden hoop enshrines a casting of ghost pipe, a plant native to the parts of North America I have called home. This piece displays the ties between connection to self and the land."
"Loam No. 2", Repurposed cherry, sterling silver, walnut oil, 2.5” x 2” x .5”, 2024What role does connection play in your creative process?
“Connection is my most persistent influence. I do not view humans as separate from the natural world. We play a role in the ecosystem, just like every other creature. This sentiment affects my chosen materials, such as repurposed wood or found stones. These objects are already a part of my environment. By incorporating them into jewelry, pieces of the ecosystem become wearable art, connecting the wearer to their habitat.
What materials I interact with impact my designs, creating limitations and questions to solve and work within. Casting plays a significant role in this process. It allows me to harvest plants from my surroundings and utilize them in designs. Turning transient aspects of the natural world into permanent components in jewelry enables me to combine the ephemeral and timeless."
NYCJW24 @ UrbanGlass, Francely Flores
What connection(s) does your queerness make to the world around you?
"Queerness is a way I find belonging in the world and in myself. It is a lens through which I have the spaciousness to embody my most contradictory and nuanced aspects of self. Queerness does not ask me to fit into a box or a pre-described role. It allows me to create the role I want to play in my life and the shared reality I create with others. My queerness also connects me to the ecosystem and the endless ways the natural world does not consider gender in its continual creativity."
NYCJW24 @ UrbanGlass, Simon Leung
Anything else you would like to share about this work?
This can be an important part of the process, sourcing materials, or research.
“Loam No. 2 presents object as organism. All of the materials used in this piece have lived a life of their own and now will go on to live another as sculpture and adornment.
I turned the wooden hoop forms on a lathe from native Cherry offcuts collected from woodworkers in my community. The end caps and organic forms were cast in recycled sterling silver from hand-sculpted wax or collected organic materials."
[queerphoria]v4 @ ECU Symposium
