© 2023—Laurie Larson

LAURIE ANNE LARSON

Salt Lake City based artist and designer; currently pursuing my masters of architecture.


LAURIE ANNE LARSON


Salt Lake City based artist and designer.












︎     Architecture
︎     Furniture
︎   Environmental Humanities
︎   Painting

00    DILATION DIARY


Dilation Diary is a new book by Finn Epperson-Valum that documents her experience of undergoing a gender confirmation surgery or vaginoplasty. The book documents this profound transformation and the healing processes involved. I worked with Finn and our editor Julia to bring this book to life: creating a comprehensive design including illustrations and a custom hand-made dust cover that conceptually connects with Finns’ metaphor of controlled burns.

Coming soon
Aug—2025

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01    GALLS


Misc new work.

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2025

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02    DESERTED: LIVELINESS...


This thesis project is about water and deserts. It is about drift, the recession of our lake, and how our conception of the desert as a void and the colonial production of toxicity has led to the crisis we face.

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Jan—2024
Spring Studio

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03    BRINE


An investigation into morphological assemblage, biomaterials, and digital fabrication completed during my University of Utah Digital Matters Fellowship.

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Jan—2023
Spring Fellowship

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04    DESIGN BUILD BLUFF



Design Build Utah is a program within the University of Utah’s Masters of Architecture program. Every year, this program designs and builds full-scale architecture in collaboration with the Navajo people. Through two intensive semesters, students are immersed in a ground-up architecture and construction process near Bluff, UT. 

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June—2023
Summer Studio

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05     BARE RIVER PRESS



Bear River Press is a small environmental humanities group started at the University of Utah with a grant from the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. The group wrote an initial book Abandon Shape and subsequent Driftwind which I designed and illustrated. The group is embedded within the Great Basin region, and the work addresses ecological, geological, and political conditions, concepts, and challenges in the nearby environments.

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Nov—2023
Driftwind

Nov—2022
Abandon Shape

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06   MNARAS & NUDA


Mnaras and Nuda are a pair of paper and plywood lamp designs. They are simple, made from humble materials and repeating flat-pack components. 

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Feb 2022—Pres.

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07    MUSEUM OF EMOTIONS


My entry to the Bildner Architecture competition Museum of Emotions, focuses on the receeding water body of the Great Salt Lake in the Great Basin. 

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Dec—2022
Fall Studio

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08    URBAN RENEWAL


This studio project is set in Rijeka, Croatia, and focuses on the renovation of the Hotel Panorama. Our project transformed the derelict building into a school for architecture, utilizing the existing terracing to maintain the views and indoor/outdoor connection that the existing architecture catalyzes. 

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Apr—2023
Spring Studio


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Two bodies in a fetal position are enveloped in the halves of a split apple. The bodies are integrated into the pale flesh of the apple by swirling colors. The edges of the apple appear to disintegrate and grow out into the blue sky above, and sand texture below. Layering and radiating lines blur the edges between the bodies, the apple, the sky, and the sand. From the bottom of the apple, a black form shaped like a Hershey’s kiss drips. This black form contains a tree trunk that replaces what would be the stem of the apple. This trunk roots into the black form, filling it and spilling into the surrounding sand. The sand is rendered in contrasting yellow and purple, that at a distance combine to look more muted. In the sky, a black circle is centrally positioned to overlap the apple slightly. This circle radiates inwards to the blackest black that collects just at the crest of the top of the apple. The black forms are distinct at the edges and are in high contrast to the rest of the painting. The bodies are light-skinned and nude. They are painted with the backs visible and heads obscured. It appears to be the same body reflected across the halves of the apple. On the right, the back of the torso is painted with the internal organs and arteries: lungs, kidneys, liver. The organs are painted brightly with small patterns and details. On the left, the body is painted with motion blur. It appears to be caught in a distorted movement that obscures the exact form of the body.

09   CHIMERA


This set of paintings works with themes and motifs I have established in my artwork in the last few years. Bilateral symmetry, vague blurred boundaries, boundaries of bodies, venation, microbes, division, replication, lobes, voids, and what fill voids, all point towards the vibrancy of matter and the ways that it is organized in living creatures.

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Feb 2021—Pres.

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10  ART RESIDENCY


This studio project involved the development of a building program and design for the location of Mexican Hat, Utah. This project featured extended site analysis and concept phases, after which I chose to develop my project into an art residency.

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Dec—2021
Fall Studio

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11    SHADE, HUT, FOOD BANK


These simple projects from my first semester of architecture school address problems of shade, shelter for sleeping, and a more complex project of designing a food bank in downtown Salt Lake City.

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July—2021
Summer Studio

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12     CHAIR 02


Chair 02 is an interation of my chair project. It focuses more intently on the joinery, strength, and the form of the wood supports. The shape, textures, and posture are at once animal-like, fungal, and dendriform.

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Oct—2022

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13    CHAIR 01


This chair design was a response to my bad relationship with a bright green plastic ikea chair. It contrasts the hard violent injection molded plastic that sits the body at 90°.

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Nov — 2019

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14    MISC


A collection of other projects.

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2015 — 2022
    © 2023—Laurie Larson