Heart on a string

Laura Evans on creating a work in "The Weight – how to move" at Boston Sculptors Gallery

Laura Evans, detail Heart on a String. All photos courtesy Laura Evans.

Laura Evans finds magic in the most mundane and forgotten materials. I first saw her sculptures 30 years ago, when she worked chiefly with brown paper lunch bags. For her 2023 exhibition at Boston Sculptors Gallery, she repurposed sticks, plastic foam, and an old detergent bottle, among other things. So it’s no surprise that her current exhibition there, The Weight – how to move, addresses what we carry. Our whole lives, if we’re refugees or unhoused, come down to the simple objects we take with us. In Laura’s work, sticks and stones, bandages and shoe lasts embody memories, relationships, and cultures.

There’s nothing vaulting or poetic about these materials; their recognizable ordinariness hits home. The way she puts such objects together, though, shuttles them outside the mundane into a realm where humble, often forgotten things turn out to be the stuff of heartbreak and magic. Here, Laura writes about Heart on a String, a veined, translucent heart she made out of recycled pods from pieces of sculptures she made a dozen years ago. The heart she built hangs, like a beloved locket, on the gallery wall from a braided leather belt, swelling at top and bottom with rainbows of stretchy gauze bandages. The belt and bandages, previously worn on the body, feel intimate. Warm colors, woven textures. Connecting cords. Knobby, swollen, swaddled shapes that evoke our own unknown innards. The heart feels exposed.

Well, damn. Isn’t this this a picture of love? Isn’t this a picture of life?

Laura writes: