The Fragments Matter: A Conversation with Artist Lori Larusso

By Kevin Murphy Wilson Photos Provided 

The intriguing work of Louisville-based visual artist Lori Larusso can be viewed all over—and well beyond—our region. Her paintings and installations, which are mostly wrapped around themes of domesticity and foodways, are included in several high-profile public collections such as 21c Museum and KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, as well as in many private collections and galleries (e.g. Rubine Red in Palm Springs, CA; Galleri Urbane in Dallas, TX; and Garvey/Simon in New York, NY). Over the years, Larusso’s efforts have been encouraged and amplified through prestigious residency fellowships from Sam & Adele Golden Foundation, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, and MacDowell (where Larusso received a Milton and Sally Avery Fellowship). Larusso is also a recipient of the Kentucky Arts Council’s Al Smith Fellowship, Kentucky South Arts Fellowship, and multiple grants from the Great Meadows Foundation and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Remarkably, in her spare time, Larusso was even a founding faculty member of Kentucky College of Art + Design, the Commonwealth’s only independent art college. We recently caught up with the artist to discuss her backstory and current projects (at the Filson Historical Society, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock, etc.) and more. 

VOICE-TRIBUNE: What can you tell us about your background, education, and experience? 

Lori Larusso: “I grew up in a small town in the rust belt of Ohio without any exposure to contemporary art. After high school I left home to study at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art & Planning (DAAP) and fell in with a community of young artists who were excited about making stuff. We worked long hours in the studio, and also put on exhibitions and screenings and concerts in various warehouse spaces. I am still friends with most of these fellow DAAPers and am constantly inspired by the art they make. I continued my formal education at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) where I earned a MFA. There I met more artists and further expanded my understanding of the art world and tried to figure out my place in it. From there I spent a few years in Providence, Rhode Island before moving to Kentucky. I have held many jobs, part-time and full-time, some art-related and many not. Along the way, I worked in my studio consistently and explored opportunities to exhibit my work.” 

VT: Are there any specific artists that inspired you or that you wanted to emulate, or alternatively were there any that you knew you didn’t want to be like? 

LL: “Back in school I got really excited by some of the pop artists like James Rosenquist and Patrick Caulfield. I responded to what they were creating on an aesthetic level, incorporating bits of imagery from popular culture and various stylized imagery into cohesive compositions. I spent a lot of time looking at Color Field painters like Kenneth Noland and Frank Stella. Meaningfully, I was also inspired by feminist performance artists like Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas, Mary Beth Edelson. I especially love Janine Antoni’s works, including Gnaw and Loving Care, and the way these performance works exemplified the use of simple materials and actions, and documentation of those actions, as a conduit to deliver meaning.” 

VT: How would you describe your work in general? Have your techniques or interests evolved over the years? 

LL: “I make paintings and installations. I execute my work in a flat, graphic style using bright, saturated colors and work in layers, using masking techniques to develop detail and sharpness. Some series utilize a square substrate, and others consist of modular cut-out shapes that accentuate figuration. This gives the work a dimensionality while somehow also emphasizing the flatness of the panel, drawing attention to the imageness. It also allows me to work on a variety of scales and activate both the wall and adjacent floorspace. The work of painting allows me to experience an object intimately, explore subject matter through mediated forms, then pick and choose what to render, and how. It also offers me space to question social customs, even the ones I delight in, and to consider discrepancies between cultural codes, human aspirations and actual realities. I’m aware that the translations of reality I construct are themselves consumable, marketable artifacts—bound to circulate and have impacts in ways I cannot predict or control. When talking about my work to people who have yet to see examples of it, I tend to focus on the themes, which include foodways, anthropocentrism, and the shifting ways that humans express care for one another. The still life genre has remained consistent throughout, especially my most recent body of work. My uses of technique and substrate have both shifted and developed over the years, for both practical and aesthetic reasons. I have explored various materials for substrates and technologies to cut them into shapes. I currently paint on cradled wood panels and CNC cut-out cast acrylic panels. I keep thinking that I would like to explore mediums outside of painting, but it seems I never finish with painting.” 

VT: Do you see any overlap between professional practice and your occasional work as an art educator at Kentucky College of Art + Design and elsewhere?

LL: “Yes, of course! I find that life and art intersect whether I want it to or not. Teaching art can be a great reminder to continue to explore, challenge, and revise in my own work.” 

VT: What are you up to at the moment? 

LL: “My work was recently featured in Hyperallergic in an article written by John Yau. I am preparing to install a large body of new installation works for my first solo museum exhibition, A Paradox of Plenty, at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock. This runs late August 2025 through May 2026. I am one of three Filson Historical Society’s 2025 History Inspires Fellows. This means that I have been doing research in their collections on various historical artifacts from the Ohio Valley region. I am especially interested in the cookbook collections, H. Harold Davis’ carbon prints of staged food tableaus taken for the Courier-Journal in the 1950s and 1960s, and the collection of restaurant menus 1820-1920. I’m creating a series of works that explore history as a stylized feedback loop, where past imagery is continually remixed into the present—while using realism in painting to critically examine how ‘truth’ is constructed and performed. A selection of my installation in KMAC Museum’s collection, A Pastiche of Good Intentions, is on display on the first floor of the museum along with a selection of cocktail and food paintings through August. This October, I will be a National Park Service Artist-in-Residence at Weir Farm in Wilton, CT, and I have work in a couple of group shows, also in October: Gimme More: The Eras of American Consumption, Carolla Arts Exhibition Center; Springfield, MO DIVIDENDS: Kentucky Arts Council Grantee Retrospective, EKU Giles Gallery; Richmond, KY.” 

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

LL: “I am thrilled that I am able to make the work that I want to make, and I am thankful for the artist community in Louisville, which I found to be welcoming when I started spending time here about a decade ago. Ideally, I’d be able to generate consistent income from my work, keep overhead costs low, and not always feel the need to look for the next paying opportunity.” 

For more information about the artist visit LoriLarusso.com.