Sandra L. Laurette

Sandra Laurette has lived in Southeast Texas since 1977. She holds degrees in Art from Western Michigan University and Lamar University.

She lived briefly in Japan and traveled to the Philippines before moving to Beaumont, Texas. In recent years, Laurette traveled to El Salvador and Guatemala, all the time focusing on understanding the art and culture of each location.

One of the original tenants, Laurette has been a studio tenant for the past 30 years.

For many years, my work has been about landscape and our relationship to it. Landscape, for me is based off the human form. In recent years these landscapes have moved from figural references to cloud forms with landscape references. Clouds soon became their own reason to be. The clouds and land forms became more abstracted.

Some of this change is due to a change in materials. My early work was of stoneware and porcelain clays. This was followed by welded and cast metals, aluminum, bronze and iron. With the cast metal I used the “Lost Foam” technique. Later cast images were of more than one metal cast together.

Often the use of different materials causes a change in imagery. My images became not the Niches bearing clouds in a landscape but became architectural references containing cloud-like symbols.

After years of working with heavy molds, metals and equipment, I learned the beauty of rigidized foam. Many of these images will soon join this page.