I am a painter who makes tactile, site-responsive art with discarded materials that have circulated through other economic systems. I recover meaning from surfaces carrying a history of human labor and industrial obsolescence. I favor rolls of paper salvaged from commercial presses and other materials scrapped for reuse. These cast-offs become precious because they are limited in quantity and possess inherent imperfections. I honor my scarce collection of remnants through attentive labor. I have an inherited resistance to discarding what remains of a material whose manufacture brought my immigrant ancestors to this country to work in the paper mills of an industrializing America. 

On the surfaces of my reclaimed materials, I dye, draw and paint vibrant color fields and patterned designs. Pattern functions as both surface and structure, inviting the eye to perceive paper as cloth. This misrecognition matters, as textiles carry associations of hand-me-downs and generational wear. What appears woven and structurally strong is actually a fragile scroll, fortified by accumulated layers of liquid color. Pattern making creates an illusion that masks the tape and pins binding narrow paper pieces into large installations that spread across gallery surfaces. The Pattern and Decoration movement's dismantling of hierarchies within art and its expanded understanding of influence have shaped my material and compositional choices for decades. Today, I find aesthetic kinship in the urban landscape, including the double-decker train cars rumbling past my studio, adorned with graffiti patchwork. As I balance a sustaining job and time in the studio, the repetition of pattern making is both a logistical necessity and a deliberate action. It records interrupted time, allowing me to leave work unfinished and return to it later. 

My work is responsive to the repurposed spaces I have inhabited— outdated office buildings, basements, even kitchen tables. These architectures have histories I build upon and futures beyond my time. Their economic value can ultimately displace the people and practices that anchor them. Currently, the lengthy rolls of work I produce are a direct product of the narrow layout of a 100-year-old former factory that serves as my studio. Its idiosyncratic space is a vital collaborator. Crumbling textures are captured on the paper, and falling detritus physically mixes into the paint I employ. 

Entering the studio always brings the question: How much time do I have? At 56, this inquiry is both practical and existential. It also applies to the very walls around me. How much time do I have in this studio before it is bought, renovated and transformed into more profitable real estate? I cannot claim moral high ground for occupying a structure whose affordability is itself temporary. I, too, capitalize on what is available: the space, the materials, the remnants left behind. My ancestors, raising nine children in conditions of scarcity, found something that could become abundant. My steady, deliberate focus acts as a handmade thread, transforming mundane materials into a persistent archive of time, labor and attention.

Laura Nugent, 2026