Lauren Goldenberg is an Art and Design major with a concentration in Studio Art; needless to say, she lives and breathes art. Her creativity is reflected not only in her artwork but in her unique sense of style as well. When Lauren isn’t planning or working on her art, you can also catch her making smoothies at Jamba Juice!
HCCP: How does art help you express yourself?
LG: I feel like I personally have issues articulating things verbally very well. I feel like my most authentic sense of self-expression is through making things visually. If I want to tell a story or get some sort of message across or just express myself, I do it visually or through my sense of style. I take pride a little bit in that but I think visual conventions is especially in my art. It helps me express myself because I do it better than I can with words.
HCCP: What value does art hold for you in your everyday life?
LG: Art is the most important thing in my everyday life; that sounds kind of pathetic but I don’t know it kind of like gives me — I really do feel like it’s my purpose to be like making art and contributing to a greater good and something bigger. I think it’s super valuable and it’s really, really important to me and because it’s so personal I don’t ever stop thinking about it. Like I’m at work making smoothies and I’m thinking about my painting and I’m thinking about what color blue will express what I’m trying to say, and I’m thinking about it when I go to sleep and it doesn’t let me sleep. So, it’s clearly something really important and I think that it’s just a really cool thing how art helps shape culture and society. So yeah, I’m excited to be a part of that.
HCCP: How did you get inspired to start, or what influenced you to do art?
LG: Well I took art classes. I was always the kid who loved coloring and stuff like that, but it was never art to me; it was kind of just more crafts. And then in high school, I didn’t wanna take art classes because when I got to high school, there was this cute guy that was gonna take guitar and I was like I wanna take guitar. My dad said, Lauren you’ve always wanted to take art classes and we’ve never been able to afford it, so take the art classes. I was like “okay I guess, I’ll take them.” So, the beginning art class was kind of easy and then the second one was pretty easy and then I took AP/IB art, which was like pretty advanced and it was more intense and I started to get more interested in it.
Actually, after the death of one of my best friends, I kind of like used it as a therapy, like a way for me to work through that hardship. It was really hard; it was my junior year of high school and I put all my energy into that. I didn’t hang out with any of my friends and like did this colored pencil drawing of this perfectly anatomical heart, and it got a lot of good feedback and stuff. So, I decided this was really enjoyable for me to do; it was a great way for me to express this energy and also people seemed to like it. So, that kind of lit the fire. But yeah I think my dad’s a big reason why I’m doing it because my dad was like “you can do art.”
HCCP: What are some cool art pieces you worked on? Which are your favorite?
LG: Some cool, random ones, I don’t think they’re super serious to what I wanna do, but I painted a mural in San Luis Obispo, and I painted two of the cows that were around. Those were fun because they’re kind of like public works and they’re not very authentically like my vision, but it was fun to do something so big and ridiculous like on a cow. But I’m really interested right now in doing large-scale figurative oil paintings that kind of take an inherently absurd image and then, through the process of painting, I find a way of like the longer you look at the painting for it to start to make sense why everything is specifically and strategically placed in the painting. I think that’s really interesting. I also make crochet installations that utilize space and a lot of different colors and stuff, which is cool. I’m gonna work on that a little bit more too.
HCCP: We know you make really cool stickers of your art; tell us a little more about that.
LG: So, basically one of my friends that doesn’t come here to school here anymore — his name is Gregory Shilling — he is a really commercialized artist. So, he goes to music festivals, like Shabang and did a mural at Shabang, and he sells his stuff on skateboards and stickers. So my friends were like I want your stuff, can I get a sticker on my laptop, etc. and I was like yeah! There’s actually a place in the Graphic Arts building, the UGS; it’s a printing place for graphic communications and you can print stuff on sticker sheets. So, I started just giving a couple of my friends some stickers and people were like that’s so dope. When I was in charge of the Art Club, we actually fundraised and had artists design a bunch of stickers and sold them on campus. So, it was kind of a hit because they’re so cheap, you can like sell them for a dollar. So, it was kind of a fun way for me to share random doodles and random, random stuff. Like I wouldn’t call them works of art, but they’re like fun little things I’d give my friends.
HCCP: What is it like being an art student at Cal Poly?
LG: Being an art student at Cal Poly is kind of interesting because it’s an engineering and agriculture school. That’s no secret, but it’s interesting because the program is so small and the professors are so good that there’s a lot of one-on-one time. I have a big, strong personal relationship with a lot of my studio professors, so that’s really cool. I have relationships with them but it’s a little bit hard because we don’t really get a lot of funding; we don’t really have the space and the proper facilities that I would say we really, really deserve, but you know it’s an engineering school. I think the main thing about being an art student at Cal Poly is that it’s nice that it’s so small. There’s three concentrations in Art and Design: it’s photography/video, graphic design and studio art. Studio art concentrations in my graduating class are like 15 of us. So, we all know each other super well, our classes are super small and it’s nice that we have that connectedness. It’s cool to be right in between San Francisco and LA so while we’re not right stuck in the contemporary art scene; we can either go to the MOMA or go down South to LA and check out art shows, which is super cool.
If you want to check out some of Lauren’s art, check out her Instagram where she posts some of her latest work!