Natural processes: Lori Krein, collage and mixed media artist

In 1999, Lori Krein took a collage class in Santa Cruz.  Ten years later, she’s the host of her very own show on Comcast cable channel 15, which debuts at noon, November 2.  Lori demonstrates various art techniques and projects that viewers can follow at home.  After a career as a corporate trainer, she finds the process of explaining what she’s doing while in the midst of a project natural.

It all started with a box of rusty washers Lori picked up at a yard sale.  A veteran of flea markets, yard sales, and trash-picking, Lori finds use in what others throw away.  The box of washers “sat in my studio for a whole year.  Then I found some drawer fronts from a home remodel.  These became my first piece of recycled art.”  From there, Lori branched out into more challenging materials: manikin torsos, plastic box frames, vases, and bits of paper all find their way into Lori’s collages and assemblages.  “It’s important to me that I reuse things for my art,” she says.  “I try to use eco-friendly materials whenever possible.”

As a child, Lori displayed her artistic bent with drawings and crafts.  “I drew trees,” she laughs.  “Trees with no leaves. Over and over.”  She wanted to be a practicing artist, but her parents encouraged her to attend business school instead.  While she worked in business, she still made crafts, selling them at fairs.  The urge to make paper came over her one year, and “I spent a whole summer in my back yard making paper out of all sorts of things.”  She took the collage class in part to learn how to use the piles of paper she’d made. 

In the class, Lori made impressionistic, abstract art with cut and torn paper.  “It was great that I didn’t have to draw.  I never learned to draw properly, and I prefer a playful representation to a realistic one.”  Lori also uses Lokta paper, a special paper from Nepal made from the daphne papyracea, a renewable resource.  Lokta has been made in the same manner for generations, comes in many colors, and is useful for art and collage. 

Lori’s influences come from the world around her, including nature and the materials she’s collected.  “Sorting through my art supplies, I get ideas from the objects themselves.”  To get a fixed idea of a particular element (i.e., a landscape) Lori sometimes searches the Internet for images.  She likes to experiment, and constantly tries new techniques and subject matter, but feels that there is a common thread that links her work together. 

Artistic talent runs in Lori’s family.  Her grandfather was a metal artisan and sculptor, and made a menorah for the White House when Jimmy Carter was president.  For fun, he welded scraps of metal together into shapes, and Lori remembers playing with the scraps from his workshop when she was a child.  An aunt was a jeweler, and Lori’s mother was very artistic, though not professionally.

 

Lori spends most of her time making art, teaching in her studio and raising her two young sons.  She also works part-time for a start-up company.  The show on Channel 15 has taken up a lot of her time lately, and she already has four shows taped and ready to air.  Lori’s eldest son is her cameraman. In order to learn how to help his mom, he took classes at San Jose’s CreaTV, the studio where Lori tapes her show.  “My show is like a cooking show for art.  I educate people regarding composition and materials.  I plan to invite guests too.”  Lori also took classes at CreaTV to learn how to manage the basic aspects of the studio. 

“What I do is like a triangle,” she says.  “I make art, I teach, and now I have the show.  I put one foot in front of the other and see how things go.  If it gets too difficult, I change my path.”  Lori’s goals for the future include getting sponsors for her show and creating project sheets as companions for specific shows.  That way, viewers can reference the instructions after seeing the show.  “I’d like people to send me photos of their projects. I’ll post them on my website.”

 

“Stick with it,” she advises other artists.  “Be persistent.  Have faith in yourself.  Keep going, and do what you’re passionate about.”

 Lori Krein’s show, Lori’s Art Studio, appears on public access Channel 15 beginning Monday, November 2 at noon.  You can visit her studio at San Jose’s Alameda Artworks on November 7 and 8, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. both days.  You can watch an interview with Lori on Silicon Valley TAGS here:  http://www.veoh.com/browse/morelike/v18600958yCxK7KaG.

Check out Lori’s website at Lori Krein Studios. View a sample of her art here. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rGzmCcn16A 

All photos courtesy of Lori Krein.