Birthed from enamoured fragments and luminous ephemera, Laura Catherine Soto’s sculpture and installation hark back to days of beachcombing and muse harmony in the organic and the artificial.

When did you learn how to bind books? What first attracted you to this as a medium to work with?
I took a bookbinding class during college, about 8 years ago now. I fell in love with the ability to tailor each aspect of a book to my particular proclivities.

Can you tell us a bit about your journey to your practice – how did you arrive at sculpture and working with rocks?
I began as a painter who was increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of absurdity in my representational work. During college, I began to destroy my paintings and became enamoured with the fragments. Which sparked a connection to my childhood fascination with beachcombing... all this luminous ephemera and debris. I occasionally will incorporate stone or found concrete into my work now… but I prefer to tease this line between organic and fabricated, until I find myself somewhere entirely other.

Your work feels transcendental. Is your artistic practice spiritual for you?
Entirely. It quiets and focuses my mind. The tactile nature of it is steadying in a way I’d imagine a rosary to be… a tether of sorts as I journey inward.

What conceptual themes or references do you tend to work with? Do you have any key inspiratory figures?
I am interested in the alchemy of discordant material… in creating a moment or space that delights or disgusts but always disrupts the viewer. I draw inspiration from my ever-growing collection of shells and rocks, as well as poetry and film.

The use of rocks to create objects for further creativity, like journals, could be seen to quench a thirst for the natural, created from our transition into the age of technology and reunite us with our origins. Do you think there is a need for the human race to reconnect with the natural world?

In general, I try to shy away from actually using natural objects in my work. While I occasionally use a found piece of concrete or metal to build upon, the overwhelming majority of my work is fabricated by me. I enjoy this tension between what is naturally occurring and what has been amassed through mixing / amassing material. This curiosity and fondness for the natural world has always been with me and never something that I personally needed to “return” to… it is an inherent part of my visual and emotional language. There is certainly a longing imbued in my work, but I think it is more varied and complicated than merely a rejection of technology for nature.

There is something very calming about the colour palette you work with. What guides the stone, colours and multimedia you decide to create with?
This is another aspect of my visual language that finds its rooting in the beachcombing of my childhood.

Can you tell us anything about what you are working on right now?
Being that I am social distancing / sheltering in place presently, I am working through all the old or odd material I have stashed away. I’ve even begun breaking down old work and am building a large form from the remnants.

Are there any new realms or materials you are interested in working with?
Someday I would love to explore glass blowing. That said... I am rather clumsy and am a little tentative to work with something so dangerous.

Your work glows with eternity to me. If you were offered to be able to live eternally, would you take it and why?
Wow, thank you, that is an enormous and beautiful response. Being that my practice is so process-based... the regeneration of old material and ephemera… I can comprehend eternity through the lens of my consciousness continuing on in some form, repurposed. I would not want to interrupt the process of birth and decay in my own body but, being drawn to mysticism as I am, find myself at peace with the idea of continuation of consciousness in a physical form or otherwise.