Sophomore has eclectic mixed-media projects down to an art

Does art imitate life or the other way around? Lara Saget, BC ’12, who is majoring in art history and visual art, sees no boundary between the two.

At her off-campus apartment, the décor falls somewhere between homey, messy, artsy, and Brooklyn-y, but maybe Brooklyn-y covers the other three. Art rests, hangs, and stands comfortably among furry polar bear pillows and a worn-in gray couch. It’s everywhere, and a visitor would have trouble sifting through it all.

That broken mirror above the couch? A Tuesday afternoon pet project. The twisted trunk of an old and discarded potted tree? It was adopted, painted, and added as decoration. What about the lamp? It’s a sculpture that houses VHS tapes and other “failed technologies,” one of Saget’s favorite new topics to explore in her art.

Fresh out of Los Angeles, Calif., she walks the New York streets with a camera in hand, waiting to photograph or videotape whatever inspires her. Times Square in particular is an inspiration. “I like the energy there,” Saget said. “Everybody is all over the place, and I’m always bumping into people. There’s so much concentrated energy in that one area.”

Saget went on to explain, “I’m very easily inspired. I’ll take a picture and just want to paint it.”

And judging from the array of art supplies threatening to overflow her apartment, one can believe her. There are close to 20 miniature canvases sitting on the floor near containers of paint and a toolbox next to her bed. Five feet from that, there’s a piece of plywood she found in the garbage that she painted and hung up with her go-to power drill.

Right now, she’s into painting but likes to play with textures, including chicken wire, plastic, welded metal, and whatever else she can get her hands on.

What’s most interesting, though, is Saget’s preoccupation with the ephemeral. Childhood nostalgia, failed technology, and her once near-crippling fear of birds are among her favorite things to paint and sculpt. “Why can’t we just burn shit in public anymore?” Saget asked, in reference to a videotape set to electronica music of her ritualistically burning a wooden sculpture.

Then she explained a trip she took to FAO Schwarz to look for childish inspiration. She found a Steve Irwin doll half-off and grew sad. “Half-off. On sale. Can you believe that?” Saget said, before thinking about the possibility of the doll being taken off the shelves soon. So she melted it and put it on a cake. It’s now a sculpture­, a way to immortalize the Steve Irwin doll in a way that FAO Schwarz never could or would.

She’s one step better at putting into visual and tactile form what many students feel: While we search for internships and crank out papers, our youth is slipping out from underneath us.