Iterations / Reiterations

Laurel Lukaszewski

January 21 – March 7, 2025, Tony Hungerford Memorial Gallery, College of Southern Maryland

June 4 - 25, 2025, Artists & Makers Gallery, Rockville, MD

In 2025, I had the opportunity to explore a new body of work that I had started working on in the fall of 2024, utilizing woodblock carving, printing on paper, and “printing” in both glass and clay. In January, I debuted the first iteration of this show—highlighting the processes and experimentation. Not all of the work in the show was completely resolved, but it formed the foundation for the show, Reiterations: A Material Exploration, that followed. The statement below is from the second show.

Reiterations is a literal interpretation of the same subject matter cast in different materials, and a more flexible examination of imagery that I’ve returned to again and again in my work. In fall 2024, I had the opportunity to take a class at the Washington Glass School to create woodblock carvings that I then cast in glass, hand-printed on paper, and printed on clay. The resulting pieces echo each other while highlighting the different ways we perceive each material. The subjects of these works are drawn from my ceramic sculpture, reflecting some aspect of the natural world and the desire to capture movement at a precise moment in time.

Developing the process further, I turned to casting my ceramic sculptures in glass. The resulting works are both an exact copy left from the plaster impression in which the glass is slumped, and a new interpretation of the forms. Particularly fascinating is the transparency and depth that glass gives my work. As I develop this body of work, I’ve become even more interested in how I translate and move between 2D and 3D subject matter.

I continue to focus on the subjects that make up my personal iconography, in particular rabbits, octopuses, and more recently ravens. All three consider our place in the natural world, the precariousness of our environment, and the need to attend to the creatures around us. But they also represent personal stories—a world where rabbits simultaneously embody hope and disappointment; octopuses contain memories of fear and excitement; the raven harkens to summer evenings in childhood competing to memorize Poe’s The Raven with my father—both fascinating and foreboding. Each time I return to these subjects, I discover something new.

Laurel Lukaszewski, 2025

Thanks to the Maryland State Arts Council (msac.org) for their support this year through a 2025 Creativity Grant. I am grateful to the Washington Glass School, Tim Tate and Jun Lee for opening the door to this exploration.