Kelsey Lauer is a Chicago-based artist, photographer, earring designer, and prolific cassette playlist creator. Half analog and half digital, Kelsey’s photos and collages explore self-reflection through the lens of the colorful palette influenced by the 1960s and 1970s.
What is your earliest memory of making art? How has art shaped you?
My childhood is pretty much a blur before age 10, but I remember being enthralled by colors at an early age. My mom said I would come home from school, and when she would ask me how my day was and I would say something like, “Today was a spinach green.”
It’s funny because I still think in colors and hues like that. The color of my childhood was strawberry milkshake.
You recently moved to Chicago from Washington State. How has that transition been? Have you noticed cultural differences in the type of art created and consumed in these two areas?
Oh, just dandy. The geography was hard to move away from, but there’s more for me here. Both cities have really vibrant and political art communities, but I find Chicago’s very welcoming and inclusive. There’s more Native influence over the art in Seattle as there is a large (and awfully marginalized) indigenous population.
Your photo collages have a certain nostalgia or zeitgeist to them. What influences your art?
A nostalgia for a certain sweetness of living that is hard to find in algorithmic times. Today we’re subjected to dealing with cold digital interfaces all of the time and I think I’m seeking some visual comfort and warmth in my work.
You’re famous (infamous?) for your cassette tape playlists distributed among your extended group of friends. Does music influence your art?
Oh definitely. Discovering cassettes marked a creative era for me—I realized there is so much music out there that does not exist digitally and has nearly fallen off the face of the planet if not for being recorded on that cassette. I dove further into music from different decades and discovered the color palette of the 60’s and 70’s. That’s when my art developed a strong sense of style.
How did you get your start creating earrings? What do you like about the medium?
I started making earrings just to wear myself. Honestly, I just got tired of spending a bunch of money on earrings just to lose them or break them, so I thought, “eh I could just do it myself.”
Once people started stopping me on the street and asking me where I got them from is when I started taking orders. I loooove polymer clay. I like that you don’t need a kiln to fire it—I bake it in my oven at home, and it’s the best. It’s super accessible to anyone that wants to try it.
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