Lorien Stern is an American visual artist, designer, and illustrator. She is known for her whimsical and colorful drawings and

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

sculptures of animals.

Work

Lorien Stern attended California College of the Arts in

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

, graduating with a BFA degree in 2013. In an interview with

Urban Outfitters Urban Outfitters, Inc. (URBN) is a multinational lifestyle retail corporation headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Operating in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, select Western European countries, Poland the United Arab Emirates, Kuw ...

, she said she entered art school as a painting major, but became drawn to sculpture after making an

urn An urn is a vase, often with a cover, with a typically narrowed neck above a rounded body and a footed pedestal. Describing a vessel as an "urn", as opposed to a vase or other terms, generally reflects its use rather than any particular shape or ...

for her father's ashes. She is best known for her colorful, cartoon-like ceramic shark heads. She has said that making the sharks helps with her fear of them and that a theme in her work is, "finding the harmony in sad and happy things and making scary things approachable.” In 2020, she partnered with Edie Parker, a handbag line, to design several handbags and

marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...

accessories, with a share of the proceeds going to a criminal justice organization. Solo exhibitions of Stern's work have been shown at galleries including Breakfast in Santa Barbara, Hashimoto Contemporary in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, and Park Life in San Francisco. She also sells clothes and accessories with her artwork.

Personal life

Stern lives and works in a trailer on her family's land in

Inyokern Inyokern (formerly Siding 16 and Magnolia) is a census-designated place (CDP) in Kern County, California, United States. Its name derives from its location near the border between Inyo and Kern Counties. Inyokern is located west of Ridgecrest, a ...

, a small town in the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily in ...

. She formerly lived in Ojai.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stern, Lorien Living people 21st-century American sculptors American women ceramists Sculptors from California California College of the Arts alumni Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women artists 21st-century American ceramists