Featured
Artists
Series

The Featured Artist Series is in partnership with Gasher Journal's forthcoming print issue, AFTER: A Collection of Ekphrastic Writing and Art.

Each month, we will feature an artist here and invite writers to submit creative writing in reaction to the art showcased. Select ekphrastic writings will be featured alongside the art at the gallery showcase at the Ana Mendieta Gallery at The University of Iowa May 6th - May 18th.

Submit creative responses to the featured artist's work to PRESS @ GASHERJOURNAL . C O M with the Subject line listing the month and genre. For example: MAY_Poetry.

Previous months:

August _ Padyn Humble

June _ Emily Llamazales

July _ Audrey An

September Artist: Laura Benson

Laura Benson is a working artist with interests in mysticism, sacredness, Jungian concepts of connected consciousness, and uncovering an internal mythology. She mainly works in mediums such as soldering, Gelli-plate, mixed media, paper mache, with most of her work maintaining an intimate scale that intends to draw the viewer in. Her main influences come from religious myths, folklore, childhood memories and Jungian writings as well as many women surrealists such as Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington. She received her BFA in Drawing from the University of Alabama in Birmingham in 2019 and her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Colorado in Boulder in 2023. Originally born in the South and recently returned to her home state of Alabama for the time being, she is currently working as a jewelry maker and artist.

About the art:

Through a variety of artmaking methods–such as soldering, Gelli-plate printing and paper mache–Laura Benson aims to create imagery that informs an internal mythos. This idea of an internal world (referred to as the Other Place in her practice) is saturated by ideologies surrounding the connected subconscious as well as myths that have pervaded numerous cultures for centuries. She is drawn to the stories, themes and imagery that have connected humanity and the valuable secrets held within them. Benson’s work alters traditionally divine or typically wicked notions to create a private narrative–with the desire for others to find themselves within the story of the art as well. Concepts such as mysticism and sacredness are redefined through this artmaking ritual; an act in which symbols of dirty divinity do not cower from the harrowing, the unsettling, the mystifying and instead curiously embrace it.