Art History:
I'm still learning. I've had poetry published, written a full-length play, many short stories and several volumes of sexy haiku (more on that later). I have no formal training but have a good sense of color and line. My paper wallets are based on origami principles and my love of paper and patterns. I have a special love of vintage books and maps. Most of my work is made from salvaged newspaper and magazines headed for the recycling bin.
I began to work with paper in 2002 when I sold my aromatherapy gift shop. I came up with a couple of original wallet designs and entered them into a juried art show. My work was accepted and the rest is history. I'm so excited to be entering into this phase of my life and glad to have so many enthusiastic supporters of my work. I'm just getting started and have many projects on the horizon. I hope to launch my Sexy Haiku line of prints and cards in February 2011.
Personal Bio:
Laura McCullough-DeLorme started life on the north side of Chicago where she developed an intense fondness for Lake Michigan, lemon ice and the Lincoln Park Zoo (she's no lomger a fan of zoos). When she was five she and her family moved to Spruce Head Island, Maine and lived in a big green house right on the ocean.
Within a year or two, the sea called out loudly and the whole family moved aboard a 34 foot wood sailboat and began an eight year cruise stopping to live in various ports along the East coast, the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. She spent countless hours in the water looking for mermaids, reading, writing poetry and entertained her little brother with promises they'd soon be kidnapped by water gypsies or that mermaids and selkies would come to claim them.
Her father was an electrical engineer with a strong affinity for Spanish Civil War, her mother is a writer and her little brother (now a father himself) teaches school and is a deep sea diver (he claims he's never seen any water gypsies).
Eventually she settled into a new life off the water and back in Chicago. The transition from water nymph to Chicago Public School student was difficult and much of those years are a blur. At twenty-one she found herself in Wisconsin and a few years later married to a fine man, writing plays and making art. She's spent time as a gas station attendant, a supervisor in a credit card center, a payday loan clerk, a cook, a barmaid, an aromatherapist, proud owner of a beautiful gift shop and now lives and works in a 100 year old warehouse apartment with her husband, a goldfish and a much talked about (but never actually adopted) dog. Her studio is just a few blocks from the lake and while she's accepted the fact that the mermaids never came looking she's still holding out for the selkies.
