ARTIST STATEMENT
My artwork illustrates the feelings and thoughts I experience in moments of my life. My sketchbook is full of lists to collect and sort emotions and objects I can remember. In my drawing, Heifer’s Work, I visualize my experience of being a woman in modern society. Women birth, feed, and raise the world around them with the power of love and nurturing care. With recent legislation that act of love is beginning to feel more like an obligation or punishment. I have started to feel sympathetic with the cows in the fields, feeding the nation from their cages while being kept as birthing machines to milk. In Heifer’s World, the women have begun to turn into cattle themselves, becoming the same meat just waiting to be devoured by the men in power. Tar Paper is a tough material made to protect the people underneath its wraps and roofs, similar to how a mother protects their kin. While protective and domestic, it is still strong, reminding me of the breed of strength a woman holds.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lauren Pontenberg is a student artist currently based in middle Indiana. She is attending Ball State University for a degree in studio arts, concentrating on drawing. Her artwork revisits situations from her past in a productive and colorful way. Growing up in suburban northern Indiana, Lauren struggled with wanting independence without having the skills to yet survive the responsibility that follows. Pontenberg’s artwork revisits situations, feelings, and people she experienced in her time growing up. She creates work with intuitive linework, bright colors, and fine details to create visuals that represent her past emotions, beliefs, and physical surroundings. When creating artwork, she aims to revisit her own traumas in a safe and productive way as well as connect to audiences, allowing them to reconnect with the inner child they feel inside themselves. Lauren Pontenberg’s watercolor painting Not so Dead Mall is currently on display at The Greater Art Museum of Lafayette in the Indiana Now Juried show and she plans to start working on her senior thesis exhibition this fall.
© Lauren Pontenberg