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CRAFTER

BY JULIE JACKSON

Influenced by the surgical profession, Laura Splan crafts to create art that’s fascinating and sometimes shocking.

My fascination with Laura Splan’s work began with a photographic diptych entitled Blood Scarf. Splan describes it best:

“Blood Scarf depicts a scarf knit out of clear vinyl tubing. An intravenous device emerging out of the user’s hand fills the scarf with blood. The implied narrative is a paradoxical one in which the device keeps the user warm with their blood while at the same time draining their blood drip by drip.”

That completely blew my mind, so I wandered around Splan’s website and was pleased to find a wide variety of highly imaginative work: psychiatric drugs represented in hooked-rug pillows, embroidery on what appears to be skin stretched on hoops, pillows made of meat (well, on closer inspection the blood-red and fat-white cushions are actually cotton and silk). As I dug a little deeper I discovered the duality of influences in her past, and it began to make sense that she is so wildly creative in such a precise way. I had to find out more.

 

Julie Jackson: First, tell us about where you grew up and how your early background in crafts evolved? Laura Splan: I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in its surrounding suburbs. My mother comes from a family of crafters, artists, and all-around domestic divas. Oddly, my own interest in crafts didn’t come until later. I think the first “craft”-related work I created was a series of large latch-hooked rug sculptures called Prozac, Thorazine, Zoloft. I made these for an exhibit that was part of the first Ladyfest

in Olympia, Washington, in 2000. JJ: At the other end of the spectrum, your father and sister worked for a company that produced medical and surgical items such as implants and instruments. Do you have any visual memories of these things being a part of your childhood? LS: My dad brought home company literature that had images of artificial hips, intraocular lenses, knee braces, and surgical drills. Sometimes he would bring the actual products home or I would see them at his office. Once he brought surgery videos home at my request, and I was able to observe a surgery with him. JJ: I love that most of your pieces are about the thrill of the double take — the juxtaposition of the familiar and the sometimes shocking. You have a mountain of great press; have there been any upheavals, controversies, protests? LS: The piece that has drawn the most extreme response across the spectrum of reactions is Blood Scarf. About a year ago, Blood Scarf was posted on a couple of blogs with very active readership, and some online buzz quickly spread. The comments that people have posted in response to Blood Scarf are fascinating — it’s like being a fly on the gallery wall. I thought I had a vivid imagination, but these comments are really fantastic! Many of them are creative speculations of how the scarf works, how much blood it holds, and whether or not it would kill you. JJ: You’ve said that you prefer to work with your