by Benjamin Nunnally
If
you’ve been floating
around the geekier side
of the internet in the last few
years, you’ve probably seen
Lauren Gray Castor’s work
without realizing it.
The local artist’s t-shirts, graphics, cosplay
and digital art have been featured on io9.
com, Threadless and more, with her “Nerd
Brain” image shamelessly posted, reposted
and triple-shared throughout nerd culture
sites (punch “nerd brain” into Google, it’s
the second result). Ask her why she’s always
neck-deep in half a dozen projects and she’ll
tell you: there’s never too much to do.
“I have to switch it up, if it’s not new it
doesn’t engage my brain enough,” said
Lauren.
22
Much of her time goes to her jewelry,
created largely from natural items like
turkey tail mushrooms, stones and bones,
all gathered up from the trails she stalks
when hunting for new materials. The foraged
bounty ends up on her kitchen table,
revealed in a picture on her smartphone to
be a very crowded workspace she swears
is cleaner than it used to be. The organic
materials are epoxied to keep them from
decaying, freezing them in time before
they’re mounted in metals and adorned
with colorful stones. The end result would
look at home in a fantasy setting, and unlike
anything else.
Her other works stand out too, like her
t-shirt designs, with pop-culture references
like “Spice Beer,” a callback to Frank
Herbert’s Dune, or an art nouveau-styled
ad for Klingon Blood Wine. Lauren’s subtle
pop culture references are a nod to the
May 2016
INSIGHT