Laura Russell is a photographer and book artist who creates hand-bound, limited-edition artist books that incorporate photographs of our urban landscape and tell a story about our culture and our communities.
Laura has participated in national and international book arts and fine art exhibitions. Her books are collected by individual collectors and are in major collections at museums, libraries, universities and corporations. Laura is also the founder of 23 Sandy Gallery, a fine art gallery in Portland, 2007-2017, where she organized 19 international juried book art exhibitions. 23 Sandy is now owned and operated by Erin Mickelson and is located in Santa Fe, NM. Laura lectures frequently on various topics related to the book and paper arts,
Artist Statement
As a photographer and book artist I create hand-bound, limited-edition artist books that tell visual, narrative and conceptual stories about our culture and our communities. My goal as an artist is to open our minds to the world we look at every day but never really see.
Shooting daily on my morning walks, bike rides across the Sonoran Desert or during frequent travels near and far, I consider my photos documentation and preservation of our visual, social and commercial landscape. They are also frequently, a celebration of the vernacular. Eventually, a body of work emerges from my wanderings and the visual stories evolves into a book.
Working in the book form allows me to round out my photographs with my own words, and the opportunity to use the book structure, materials or concept to tell a bigger, more compelling story.
Collections
I am grateful to the following organizations that collect my books:
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Bainbridge Island Museum of Art
The Smithsonian Library
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California
The University of Washington, Seattle
Hyundai Museum of Kids’ Books and Art, South Korea
Scripps College, Claremont, CA
The University of Oregon Architecture and Allied Arts Library, Eugene, OR
Colorado College Library, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Ringling School of Art & Design, Sarasota, Florida
Portland Art Museum, Art Insight Resource Center, Portland, OR
StorageTek Corporation, Broomfield, Colorado
The Newark Public Library, Newark, New Jersey
The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
The New York Public Library, New York
The Denver Public Library, Denver, Colorado
The University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado
The University of North Texas, Denton, Texas
Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee
University of Miami, Florida
University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida
California State University, Hayward, California
Scripps College, Claremont, California
Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
University of California, Berkeley, Environmental Design Library
Cerritos Public Library, Cerritos, California
University of California, Santa Barbara, Davidson Library Special Collections
Otis School of Art & Design, Los Angeles, California
Dartmouth College, Baker-Berry Library, New Haven, Connecticut
The Tate Collection, London