A third-generation gardener and fourth-generation floral crafter, the clay petal is Lauren Naomi's chosen artistic form.  Lauren creates fictional, sculptural works illustrating and/or meditating on our connectivity to nature, to each other and to ourselves, focusing on the shifting and sometimes antithetical nature of that connectedness and bringing into play notions of community and global responsibility.  Educated in psychology as well as in art, Lauren’s works often tackle the emotional and psychological - investigating how broad human concepts and conditions, personal and collective responses, private conversations and moments, and the ebb and flow of feelings that stir and shift within the self, play out in her unique, self-created language of clay petals.   Sculpturally, Lauren’s iterations delve into density, scale, gravity, flexibility and structure.  All works begin with a hand-sculpted clay petal.  Then that petal is built upon with more petals and turned into a rose, or instead pulled to create a flimsy petal and then built upon to make a tipsy rose, or instead left to itself and pulled and smashed and stretched against the canvas like a paint stroke.  Or the petal is turned on its side like a sleeping child or rolled into itself to resemble some sea creature or pushed to stand tall with other petals like an army of soldiers, or gently pressed to lean, sway, dance, flit. Or rolled up completely into itself like a ball.  Testing her own human body's artistic limits, no clay tools are used to sculpt in her works; instead, she seeks to push the boundaries of what she can sculpt in clay using only her hands and object impressions. Ongoing Series include: Garden Bonanzas, Sky + Line, Origins, Reciprocity, Mixed Beds, Little Landscapes, Soil Studies, Party, Response, Personal Narratives and Shape Play.