Metro Detroit artist and independent curator Laura Earle is interested in how art starts a conversation, transcends barriers and becomes a catalyst for building community, shifting meaning and shaping culture. With a background in furniture design and graphics, she turned her focus to making visual art in 2018, encouraging collaborative vitality and camaraderie in her curatorial projects. With an inclusive, community-building approach centered on social justice issues — gender equality (Womxnhouse Detroit 2021, Dear Womanhouse 2018), racial equality (Unraveling Racism: Seeing White 2019-22) and climate change (Environmentally Speaking 2022, Climate Conversations 2021, Drawdown 2020), Earle facilitated gatherings of artists to hold conversations shaped by well-researched source material. Making artwork while in dialog with the exhibiting artists, there is no outsider jurying or exclusion. The resulting exhibits are intimate portrayals of an artistic community exploring a topic together. The shows travel as a kind of material diary, inviting viewers in different locales into the larger narrative, subverting de facto segregation, offering new perspectives and tipping points.

Artist’s Statement

My work explores interactivity – how the attitude and shape of an exhibit or an artwork sculpts our internal and external space. And how our internal space shapes our attitudes and actions. I make exhibits and artwork that invite people into a larger narrative, to consider pivot points. I’m interested in how art starts a conversation and becomes a catalyst for building community and shifting meaning. These sculpted conversations focus on social justice issues such as gender equality, racial equality and reversing global warming.