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By: Art & Object Magazine | January 12, 2022 | Colleen Smith
This story was featured in the online Studio section of Art & Object magazine.
Amy Laugesen, a Denver native, sculpts horses and mules in homage to their roles in the history of Colorado. However, her rustic yet elegant ceramic and mixed-media equine sculptures look as if they could have been created on another continent in another millennium.
“I approach my glazing not in the traditional sense of glazing, but for patina. I choose glazes that look like they have been buried or rusted or weathered so they have a sense of history to them,” says Laugesen in a telephone interview. “I also gravitate to layering of glazes, using underglazes and layers of mark-making. I like my pieces to look like bronze patinaed with salt air to that blue-green, or peeling paint, or rusted steel.”
Laugesen’s essential lines of equine shapes reduce the animals to elegant essences. Her bases of steel or wood add artful elements of design, juxtapositions that complement the ceramics. She might incorporate an artifact, as well, in her mixed-media sculptures.
On Laugesen’s website, her artist statement notes, “With a nod toward ancient artifacts of countless civilizations, my sculptures intentionally appear as relics, treasures to honor the profound age-old human relationship with these magnificent creatures.”
Read the full article at Art & Object Magazine >
Laugesen is thrilled to show her smaller sculptures again in the 2022 Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale. She’s been included among the artists in this prestigious annual show consecutively since 2013.
“There are not many artists in the Western genre who can take a common theme—in this case, the horse—and cross so many boundaries,” shares the curator of the Coors exhibit, Rose Fredrick, in an email. “She bridges past and present, ancient and contemporary.”
Rose Frederick, Curator, Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale
“Horses and sculpting always bring me comfort, I guess these pieces are emotionally helping me navigate this turbulent time.”
Amy laugesen
