Lauren Boilini: FRUITFUL
“I am particularly interested in animal behavior, particularly forms of conflict and mating rituals, and I was delighted when everyone had ideas for me.”
Fall 2023 Artist-in-Residence at
Missoula Butterfly House and Insectarium
“If my mother only knew” oil on linen 2” x 30” x 1.75” by Lauren Boilini
What was your research process during your residency?
I am by no means a scientist, let alone an entomologist, so I was happy to just keep my ears and eyes open. I spent the months leading up to the residency following Bug Wrangler Brenna @missoulabutterflyhouse posting her Bug Encounter videos over social media, so I knew I would be working with passionate, knowledgeable folks. In my first week, I introduced myself to the team by giving them a short Pecha Kucha-style presentation on my paintings and projects, which helped start conversations and brainstorming areas for me to study. I am particularly interested in animal behavior, particularly forms of conflict and mating rituals, and I was delighted when everyone had ideas for me. At home in my studio in Seattle, I generally work from photo references that I find through research primarily, but I was excited to start taking my own reference photos and have a more hands-on experience with my subject matter. Kelli Sinner with Open AIR also set up a tour of the Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum on campus, which holds Montana's largest collection of birds and mammals, expanding my research exponentially.
“If Your Mother Only Knew (study 2)” gouache on paper 12” x 9” 2021
by Lauren Boilini
What keeps you returning to your current subject, body of work?
In 2021, I was reading a short collection of essays called “Tomboyland,” written by Melissa Faliveno, another expat Midwesterner, writing about gender, sexuality, identity, and trying to find home. In it, she had a story about living with an infestation of moths and falling in love with them. The imagery she evoked sparked a huge new body of work looking at insect behavior.
This short essay was written partly in honor of Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” about how a moth's struggles and life cycle parallel our own as humans. I fell in love with both, and they instantly conjured images in my mind that tied back to the feeding frenzies and migration patterns I have been playing with for many years. I still get a kick out of the fact that one short story inspired a whole new body of work, which eventually led me to Montana.
“Celestial Navigation (study)” gouache on paper 22” x 30”, 2022 by Lauren Boilini
Tell us about your artistic background.
I was born and raised in Bloomington, Indiana, by a single mom. I received my BFA in Painting & Art History at the Kansas City Art Institute in 2006 and my MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2008. As a painter, I also work in installation and public art, completing exhibitions and projects up and down both coasts. Residencies have been enormously influential to me, allowing me to travel, meet new people, and build my understanding of a global art world. I have served as an artist-in-residence at Can Serrat in Spain, Jentel Arts in Wyoming, Soaring Gardens in Pennsylvania, the Studios of Key West, the Creative Alliance and School 33 Art Center in Baltimore, and as a Consortium Resident at the Studio Art Centers International (SACI) in Florence, Italy. I was invited as an artist-in-residence at the Burren College of Art in Ireland and received a full fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in 2012. I have completed public art projects for the Maryland Department of Public Health and the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport. In 2016, I was awarded a grant to publish a book of drawings. I spent the summer of 2019 as an artist-in-residence at MASS MoCA working on the sequel, which I completed for a solo exhibition at Furman University in South Carolina in 2020. In the winter of 2022 I opened a solo exhibition at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma and began work on the third in a trilogy of artist books this spring while artist-in-residence at Amazon’s headquarters. Collaborations with a number of different artists have been vital to the development of my work, and I look forward to future opportunities. I am currently faculty at the Evergreen State College, where I have been on and off since 2016. We have a small Natural History Museum on campus, whose specimens I often utilize in my classes, so I was thrilled to share my experience at the Butterfly House with my students.
Death's head cockroach at the Missoula Butterfly House and Insectarium (Left)
A molt of insect at the Missoula Butterfly House and Insectarium (Right)
How was your experience as an Open AIR Artist-in-Residence?
My experience as the very first artist-in-residence at the Missoula Butterfly House & Insectarium was positive and fruitful, though there was a certain degree of pivoting and managing expectations, both for me and my host site. We had hoped that the Butterfly House would be open and operational by the time I was in residence, but circumstances delayed their opening until this winter. However, I made the best of what was available to me, including shadowing an education trip to a local preschool, attending volunteer trainings, assisting in predator feedings and visiting the Emlen Lab on campus. I was given a cubicle alongside the whole staff, which I utilized to quietly paint and observe the comings and goings of a bustling Insectarium preparing to open for the public.
“Celestial navigation study (gold)” watercolor on paper 16” x 20” 2023
by Lauren Boilini, created during Open AIR residency
What are you up to now (post Open AIR)?
On the day I arrived in Missoula, I found out I received a fellowship from the McMillen Foundation, partially to fund a project I proposed to work on in Montana, so it was perfect timing. I had spent a full day the Friday before my departure doing intensive interviews and presentations with other finalists over Zoom, so I was thrilled to begin the residency with some outside financial support and encouragement.
I have also been able to take these references and research and begin a new group of paintings. I will be headed to a residency on Vashon Island this summer, which will be an ideal time for me to hunker down and unpack all that I learned.
“Bareback (study)” gouache on paper 22” x 30”, 2019 by Lauren Boilini
Any new projects in the works?
Though I traditionally work on a large-scale, when I first moved to Seattle from Baltimore in 2014 I had to scale down. In 2016 I was awarded a grant to create a small book of drawings loosely based around the structure of a graphic novel, to which I recently finished the sequel. I built the book sequentially, telling the story behind paintings I have been working on for the past fourteen years. It consists of small drawings pulled from the animal kingdom that investigate my thoughts on sport and war, and their shared violence. Image-based, the story takes place on a fictional island in which only male members of different species have survived, and explores the destruction that follows. In this second book, the human men have died off, and their animal counterparts have been left to take over the island and fight for power. I have begun work on the third in the series. The final part of this trilogy looks at how moths, butterflies and insects would interact in this dystopian vision of an alternate world, hopefully completing a cycle that will allow me to start again from the beginning.
“Celestial Navigation” oil on linen 78” x 66” x 2”, 2022 by Lauren Boilini
Like to know more about Lauren? Visit her website and follow on Instagram @laurenboilini
