Laurie was born in the late 60’s in New Jersey. She was the only deaf person in the family. She taught using the oralism methods until she attended Youth Leadership Camp (YLC at Swan Lake, Minnesota) in 1984. That was when she learned ASL is her native language. Later on, Laurie studied Media Production at NTID/RIT (National Technical Institute of the Deaf/Rochester Institute
Laurie illustrated a children’s book about Betty G. Miller, famous deaf artist. Laurie runs her own solo business, Laurie Rose Art Studio, designing, and creating digital works and painting. She currently lives in NJ as a caretaker for her mother.
“Birthday Girl” (2015)
Acrylic
18″ x 24″
Birthday Girl is a self-portrait of me as a six years old, I wanted to show my reflection on how I felt humiliated through an image of this flickering red light above me “HI! I am Deaf” when I was wearing a big hearing aid box on my chest in public. The painting is about me being an isolated, depressed young girl with either a party or dunce hat.
“My Life” (2015)
Assemblage
32” h x 22” w x 15” d
I saw Martha Glowacki’s My Arcadia exhibition at Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin and I was touched by her work. This memory of her work had inspired me to create my masterpiece, My Life. This art piece involved an old jewelry box on top of a nightstand with drawers with my past items, hearing aids, batteries, evaluation papers, old drawing pad and few more items that were associated with my childhood to show how those items influenced my sense of self as a deaf child. Those items gave the attendees an opportunity to open the drawers, read the papers, and look at the pictures to gain some insights into my journey as a deaf child. Also there are several pictures of me growing up on the wall as well.
“Greedy Ear” (2015)
Printmaking/Illustration
16″ x 20″
Greedy Ear, an illustration to printmaking print of a huge ear on the top of the head with hearing aid batteries on the face. The goal of this artwork was meant to show how a person who was being obsessive to fix their ear problems and seemed to be overlooked by not seeing better approaches to deal with his or her deafness instead of medical approaches through hearing aid(s).
Click images for titles and specs for each artwork.