An artist with a penchant for color is brightening the Shadyside Arts Festival. Between Aug. 23-24, festivalgoers can enjoy a rich array of acquirable works from Lauren Lazar Stern.
The Jewish artist’s pieces consist of mixed media and collage, with most creations featuring a woman prominently placed in the center.
The subjects, Stern said, are largely inspired by another professional undertaking.
A licensed counselor specializing in eating disorders, women’s issues, trauma and PTSD, Stern, 70, employs traditional therapeutic approaches, art therapy and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) when working with patients.
“A lot of what I express are the emotions that I feel each day as I work with these girls and these young women to help them find another way, another strategy, another way, to live comfortably,” she said.
Within her art, the Shadyside resident works on paper, wood and canvas. She formerly painted silk but the dyes left her feeling “woozy” and unwell. Stern now mostly uses acrylics. Her color scheme is grand, with frequent returns to purples and reds.
Tucked within the layered images are paint, paper and stories.
One work, “Strong Woman,” features an orange and red-haired figure surrounded by wild animals. Flanking each side of the melancholy subject are written words, including an excerpt from Carmen Twillie and Lebo M’s “Circle of Life,” a song popularized by Elton John and “The Lion King.” Pasted text includes the black, blue and white “Stronger Together” iconography, which appeared following the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
When asked about the recognizable font, Stern noted she and her husband had planned a party marking their anniversary and birthdays on Oct. 27, 2018.
“We had our entire family come in,” she said.
The catered event quickly morphed. An elaborate meal was canceled.
“We got pizza, wine and beer, and just invited every friend that wanted to come over to stop by,” she said. “We had candles and we said prayers, and we just all sat together.”
Stern remembers the hourslong experience being both “sad” and “beautiful,” as attendees congregated and recited the Mourner’s Kaddish.
The eclectically dressed person depicted in “Strong Woman,” with pink cheeks and red lipstick, peering away from the viewer, harks back to the synagogue shooting, Stern said.
“We see this sad girl, who just kind of lost everything. And we all lost everything that day: We lost our identity, we lost our spirit. It’s just, oh my God, we have to worry about everything all the time, and feel like we’re not safe and we’re not comfortable,” she said.
In another of Stern’s works, “On Top of the World,” a young woman with cropped brown hair places one hand beneath her chin while resting her other hand by her side. A bird sits on the woman’s shoulder; other birds appear elsewhere. A pink, black and yellow butterfly flits toward painted clouds at the top of the work. Layered beneath the subject are images, including a Volkswagen Beetle.
“We used to have a VW,” Stern recalled. “My mother, she was of course Jewish, and hated German cars, but she had a bug anyway.”
The woman in the image wears a multi-tiered purple and red-colored crown. Beneath the figure, car and birds are excerpted periodicals.
“During the pandemic, what I would do is just collect newspapers,” Stern said. “It was very hard, you couldn’t really go anywhere to get anything, so I used what I had. We would get all of these catalogs and newspapers and Jewish Chronicles, and I would just rip them up, and paint over them and just paint pieces from them.”
The amalgamated piece points to a desire for freedom and movement with a young woman, front and center, who “was really somewhere else, dreaming,” Stern said.
Those who frequent the artist’s booth during the Shadyside Arts Festival or follow her work online, will find hundreds of pieces with “meaning and purpose,” she said.
Each item may boast a rich collection of color, but the work is about more than mere “fun,” Stern continued. “It talks about the love of life, it talks about the enjoyment of every day.”
Helping convey that message are levels of newspaper print, pictures and paint signaling the “strength of the human spirit,” Stern said. In the search for meaning, there’s a desire “not just to understand the self, but to understand how other people feel and how they respond to you.”
Grasping those interactions requires a process similar to layering and collage, she said. It’s about “connecting.” PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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