As a fiber artist, Laura Boban often uses clothing and interior textiles—like sports jerseys, bed sheets, garden flags and pillows—to explore intersections between the home and sports, and blur familiar identifiers for femininity and masculinity. In one work, abstract figures constructed from effeminate fabrics convey images of hockey fights, while another stacks objects from home and sports to form a precarious, haphazard structure.
“I’m interested in domesticity and suburbia,” says Boban, who is an MFA candidate in the VCUarts Department of Craft/Material Studies. “I started thinking about sports as a metaphor for belong and the idea of a team. And most of the textiles are thrifted, so they had a life before in [someone’s] home.”
Last spring, Boban was preparing for her candidacy show when she got a message from Haley Clouser, a graduate student in the museum studies program in the Department of Art History. Clouser was about to graduate and wanted to gain more experience collaborating with artists.
Profile on Laura Boban and Haley Clouser for VCUarts.