Artist Statement – Lauren Rutten

My work explores how we live with loss and change, and how memory, grief, and beauty coexist in the places and materials that hold our stories. Rooted in contemplative practice, years of daily meditation and photographic ritual have shaped how I hold stillness, perception, and time within my creative process. Through photography, handmade paper, oil and cold wax painting, experimental stitching, and printmaking, I explore the emotional residue of time and touch. The creative process is both a form of reflection and a way to transform what has been broken into something whole again.

In my ongoing project Save This Piece, I invite community participation through photography and writing to record our shared experiences of environmental disruption and renewal. These collective gestures of noticing and remembering create a space for dialogue about care, interconnection, and the fragile ecosystems—both human and natural—that sustain us. Whether through the quiet surface of a photograph or the layered materiality of wax and paper, my work examines the tension between fragility and endurance, and the ways we find beauty in impermanence.

Across mediums, I return to the idea of the “holy home”: the body as vessel, the dwelling as sanctuary, the landscape as mirror. Each work becomes an offering that holds both sorrow and joy, inviting viewers to reflect on their relationship to place, community, and the living world we share.