Emily Hamilton Laux

BIOGRAPHY

Emily Hamilton Laux is a visual artist who uses photography and other mediums to examine ideas about the human relationship with domestic and natural environments. Her creative practice includes various photographic processes, collage, and hand-made books.

Laux has exhibited her work at museums and galleries in the Northeast, including the Griffin Museum of Photography, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Rhode Island Center for the Photographic Arts, the Davis Orton Gallery, the Westport Arts Center, and the Ridgefield Artists Guild, among others. She has had one-person shows at the Westport Library and the RPAC Gallery in Ridgefield, CT.

Born in Saigon, and raised in Cambodia, Paris and Washington, Laux has an MA from the American University School of International Service and a BA from Tulane University. Previously, Laux worked in publishing in New York, London, and Hong Kong. In Connecticut, she worked as a photojournalist, gallery manager, and arts educator.

Laux maintains a studio at Firing Circuits Studios in Norwalk, CT, and she lives in Westport, CT.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a lens-based artist who works in digital and historic photographic processes, as well as mixed-media and collage. The conceptual foundation of my creative practice is an ongoing exploration of the complex relationships between humans and their environments—natural, domestic, and constructed.

My work follows two parallel paths. One is a sustained research-based investigation into botanical biodiversity, expressed through four distinct but interconnected bodies of work. With this work I am sounding the alarm about the world’s accelerating biodiversity loss in the botanical world. These projects employ a mix of scientific and studio art-based methods to examine and reframe human interaction with flora. The other path is narrative and deeply personal, centered on ideas about home, memory and family.

Under this umbrella, I inhabit multiple roles: researcher, scientist, set-designer, anthropologist, and writer, allowing me to blur the boundaries fact and fiction, art and science. I am most excited about new ideas and connections concerning how people experience their environments, and what that means for their own psyches, and their relationships with their families, friends and larger communities.

I present my work in the form of limited-edition prints and small editions of hand-made books.