Lauren Gregory talks Tradition and Technology

By Kevin Murphy Wilson • Photos by Ashley Holstein and John Schweikert 

Lauren Gregory is a Tennessee-based multidisciplinary artist and educator who will be featured this month in a solo exhibition at the 849 Gallery [on the campus of Kentucky College of Art + Design]. Originally trained as a portrait painter, Gregory gradually developed her own approach to stop-motion animation in an attempt to bring her poignant paintings to life. And ever since the pandemic [of 2020], Gregory has also reimmersed herself in quilting—an Appalachian craft she initially absorbed at a young age from the matriarchs of her family. We recently caught up with the multifaceted maven to discuss her artistic journey ahead of her new show’s opening reception on Jan. 15 [5pm-7pm at 849 S. 3rd Street]. 

VOICE-TRIBUNE: Can you tell us a bit about your background? 

Lauren Gregory: “I grew up in East Tennessee and then left for many years. I went to college in South Carolina, got my masters [MFA] at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before moving to New York in 2010. I lived in Bushwick, worked in the art world, and made animated music videos [for high-profile acts such as Leonard Cohen, Norah Jones, James Taylor, and Sarah McLachlan]. Eventually that led to the opportunity to teach animation at Parsons School of Design. Parsons has been like a whole other leg to my education, I’ve learned so much from teaching there. I moved back to Nashville for good during the pandemic, where I got married and started a family and I am continuing to make my work and teach.” 

VT: Looking back, what put you on the creative path in the first place? 

LG: “My mom taught me to sew as a child and just how to make stuff and be creative in general. She always supported my creative pursuits. My mom and my grandmother were both painters. I rebelled against the family tradition of painting in my youth and was way more into making music. I didn’t start painting until way later. I went to the University of South Carolina on a bassoon scholarship, but then I quit the orchestra. I was having kind of an existential crisis and didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. My mom and my grandma sat me down in front of an easel and a mirror with some oil paints and encouraged me to paint a self portrait. I fell in love with painting over the course of a few days of painting that portrait, and I changed my major to painting when I returned from that spring break trip to see my family.” 

VT: Are there any specific artists that continue to inspire you? 

LG: “Lately I’ve been looking at a lot of quilts. I love the Gee’s Bend quilters and Rosie Lee Tompkins. I am also really inspired by the quilts of Chris Edwards, he is my buddy who I teach with at Ox-Bow.” 

VT: How have your materials, processes, and subject matter evolved over the years? 

LG: “At first I was making portraits with oil paint, and then that evolved into documenting those paintings with a camera as they changed over time, which was really just animation, I realized. So then I made oil paint and clay animations, and sometimes painted my portraits on fake fur. When the pandemic hit, I had a hard time with just not wanting to paint, and I found myself quilting again for the first time since I was a child. Quilting has become a major part of my practice since then, and kind of exists alongside my paintings and animation. I have a hard time describing my work to people who haven’t seen it, because the quilting and animation sides of me can sometimes be difficult to connect or generalize.” 

VT: In this day and age, and at this point in your career, how do you measure success as an artist? 

LG: “Success to me at this stage in my life is just taking care of my daughter and keeping up with my work, getting to still make work. If I can sort of juggle both of those two things during this season of my life, if I can be present for her but still teach and make a quilt, that’s what success looks like to me right now. And if I can find time to take a shower, that’s a cherry on top.” 

VT: What sort of public-facing events or activities do you have coming up? 

LG: “I’m very happy to have quilts and animation work in an upcoming show at the Frist Museum called ‘In Her Place: Nashville Artists in the Twenty-First Century.’ I’m also continuing to teach quilting and animation at Parsons and Ox-Bow. And I have the solo show [titled ‘Snacks: Contemporary Quilting, Painting, and Animation’] opening at KyCAD, where I am very excited to be teaching a quilting class this Spring.” 

For more information visit laurengregory.net or kycad.org.