Laura Sharp Wilson was born in San Juan , Puerto Rico and grew up on both sides of the Hudson River. On the Jersey side she built forts, rambling the woods and ruins of a magical place called Rio Vista – an abandoned estate owned by Cuban sugar plantation owners. On the opposite side of the Hudson Wilson witnessed 1970’s New York City, riding subway cars completely covered with graffiti, inside and out, making a game of spotting hookers while driving down the lower West side highway, waiting online for Shakespeare in the park as the purple people passed out flyers about vegetarianism.
Wilson went onto study fine art at Carnegie Mellon University, learning a lot about color from Sam Gilliam, a Washington DC abstractionist. Following undergrad she studied surface textile design at North Carolina State University and the Fabric Workshop, immersing her in the world of pattern and fabric. Exploring installation and sculpture as a graduate student and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with mentors, David Finn, elin o’hara slavick and Ghada Amer taught her how to be an artist in the world.
Over the past fifteen years Wilson has been mostly a painter with some sculpture thrown in – making obsessive, flat, tangled images on mulberry paper about being in this chaotic, contradictory world.
Wilson went onto study fine art at Carnegie Mellon University, learning a lot about color from Sam Gilliam, a Washington DC abstractionist. Following undergrad she studied surface textile design at North Carolina State University and the Fabric Workshop, immersing her in the world of pattern and fabric. Exploring installation and sculpture as a graduate student and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with mentors, David Finn, elin o’hara slavick and Ghada Amer taught her how to be an artist in the world.
Over the past fifteen years Wilson has been mostly a painter with some sculpture thrown in – making obsessive, flat, tangled images on mulberry paper about being in this chaotic, contradictory world.
