Denise Laws’ interest in manufactured materials, fabrications, packaging, foiled-lined airtight bags and pouches, candy wrappers, Tetra-Pak, and the detritus that winds up in our landfill, informs her work. ‘Mylar Reveries’ is an awakening, and relocating,of predestined discard, revealing the beauty hidden within disposable consumer culture, re-focusing through a different lens and filter on what we acquire and consume. The everyday cast-offs are re-envisioned and re-cast, and then collaged into shimmering, fantastical, dreamy motifs, landscapes, and topographies.
Denise received her BFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in the Interdisciplinary Department, 2001, and was the recipient of the SFAI Merit Scholarship. Her final graduating artwork was included and published in the 2001-2002 San Francisco Art Institute BFA Catalog. Denise donates her time and artworks annually to a variety of local and national charitable art auctions and benefits such as Hearts and Hero’s San Francisco 2008, Monster Drawing Rally, Southern Exposure SF, Visual Aid SF, San Francisco Bike Coalition, Spectrum Access Institute, and ArtSpan, including the “Art Block for Ghana” art benefit, in 2011. Her work is in the 2012 Edition of Studio Visit Magazine. She was accepted as a participating artist in The ArtSpan Studio Residency in 2016 until 2018. An image of, “Artificial Quarry” is in San Francisco, Root Division’s, MFA Never 2016 archive book project. Denise was one of fifteen featured Artists juried into ArtSpan’s Selections Show at The Midway in San Francisco and additionally, in 2017 was nominated for The Fleishhacker Foundation, Eureka Fellowship Grant. Most recently, she was one of 20 artists selected to participate in The Ladies Room, curated by Danielle Krysa, “The Jealous Curator,” and presented by Jen Tough Gallery in San Francisco 2019.