Lauralee Hutson is a practicing metalsmith, enamellist and painter who also spent 20 years educating in dimensional design and sculpture. Her works exhibit internationally, nationally and regionally, have been included in international enameling publications and are entirely hand fabricated one-of-a-kind pieces of fine art and fine craft. Sculptural pieces have exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian and the National Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee and jewelry has exhibited at the Royal Ueno Museum, Tokyo, Japan. Pieces are also included in nationally recognized private collections.

Having been raised in northern Appalachia, she has a keen interest in flora and fauna, often using it as metaphor for human behaviors as she examines psychological drivers of behaviors. Some of her work is sociopolitical satirically focused as she responds to current events. Lauralee is currently engaged in creating sculptural boxes featuring female characters that land on the pages of her drawing books from what often seems their own bidding to gain personalities, physicality in real dimensional space and representing their own uniqueness while also demonstrating common threads in humanity throughout time and space.

The enameling techniques of Cloisonne, Champleve and Limoges combine with her metalsmithing skills to bring refined detail, brilliant surfaces and implied or real movement in her sculptures and jewelry.

Lauralee’s backstory:

In 1994 a head-on-collision involving her entire family permanently altered the family composition and created many challenges for those surviving. Having left art for medicine in her first pass through college, she returned to school three years following the accident and graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art, receiving multiple awards and one of the three highest awards upon graduation, while simultaneously seeing her two oldest children through college on a shoestring budget.

Enjoy your browse through Lauralee’s site.