Life & Work with Lauren YS

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren YS.

Hi Lauren, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I have been drawing in sketchbooks for what feels like my whole life, sitting in long car rides with my family and drawing imaginary scenes for hours at a time. In high school, I taught myself how to use Photoshop with a mouse and would spend lunchtimes coloring in drawings I’d done the night before in the school computer lab. I wrote a short graphic novel as a senior, and an essay on that novel got me accepted to my alma mater, Stanford, where I studied creative writing and visual art and co-taught a graphic novel course. After graduation, I had hoped to write my own full-length graphic novel but fell in love with murals when I met Nychos painting Downtown in SF. From my friendship with him, I began painting in the streets and began translating my work through spray paint and traveling to work. My career kind of naturally evolved from there, and I have spent the last ten years evolving my voice, expanding into activism and representation, cultivating my visual rhetoric, and traveling the world. I never would have imagined this could be a real career and my real life, but I am so grateful and looking forward to how I can continue expanding into other mediums, building my world, and reaching more people with my work.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Of course not! The life of a freelancer is never easy. Developing skills with spray paint was a difficult path that took around three years to master and a lot of poor murals in between. Evolving a voice and style is also difficult and full of doubt and perseverance, but those formative years also really teach you who you are and what you want to say. And of course, there are always trials and tribulations associated with navigating an itinerant life and personal relationships, grief, business, and everything in between. Losing my grandparents was one of the hardest things I’ve had to go through, but it inspired me to connect more with my heritage and has irrevocably influenced my work in Asian representation and work with heritage. This career will never cease to be challenging or exciting – of that, I am sure.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a muralist primarily, as well as an illustrator, painter, and have also done intensive work in design, installation, and tattoo. One of my proudest accomplishments is the room I designed and installed at Meow Wolf Santa Fe, entitled ‘the ancestral crypt,’ which explores gender fluidity and ancestry and the psychedelic links between the two. It is an immersive experience born from a decade of 2D work that really took all of my creative energy and stretched it beyond what I thought was possible. I don’t necessarily think about what sets me apart- as an artist who works heavily in the rhetoric surrounding what it means to be mixed-race, genderfluid, and queer, I like to focus on creating spaces where those of us who feel ‘othered’ can feel ‘part of’, because these intersections often create a sense of isolation in the world, I think our power lies in finding each other and reveling in the ways our ‘otherness’ are ties that link us together, and finding ways to continually protect and lift each other up further.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
Hmm.. I think anytime I was all together with my siblings, mom, and grandparents. We grew up part-time in Hawai’i (military family), so my childhood is rife with really beautiful memories with them, wandering in Chinatown and at the beach. That’s also where I began my mural career, painting small walls with Pow Wow Hawaii (now Worldwide walls), so I owe Jasper, Gress, and Kamea a lot for helping me begin my career. Every year I would come paint while my mom and popo would sit in a sun chair and watch and eat dim sum. Sometimes popo would help me paint a little bit. Those are the memories I hold most dear when I think about those who have come and gone, and that keep me buoyed up when I feel lonely or unsure of where I am going.

Contact Info:

• Website: laurenys.com
• Instagram: squid.licker

Image Credits
Louis Jensen, Atlas Media, The Artist