Lauren & Friends is a tribute exhibition dedicated to the memory of Lauren Ditchley. Lauren passed away in June this year, leaving behind an incredible legacy of artwork, shared experiences, and lasting memories. The surviving artists of Two-Thirds Studio, an art collective Lauren co-founded in 2009, had the opportunity to access her body of work to organize this exhibition.

The exhibition includes early work from Lauren’s years at Two-Thirds, her years as an artist at the Harrison Center, and the work as well as some of her social practice work out and about in Indianapolis. Though there’s a lot that changed through all of the phases of her career, including her preferred mediums and subjects, many of her work's themes and goals remained the same.

Early in her art career, Lauren was crazy about buildings and dwellings. It wasn’t necessarily an affinity for architecture, but rather an obsession with ordinary and mundane construction. Through her eye, she found something interesting that an ordinary person would ignore. For instance, she’d photograph a white brick building but cropped in on an area where the AC condensation dropped out. This created a red stain from the rusting metal pipes below – where a sapling grew out of the concrete, thriving on the rusty AC water. At that time, I’d look at her photos and wonder, “what is so special about this white building and why should I care about it?” I was too focused on what I saw to notice what she was seeing. Over time, as I got to know her better, I began to see life from her unique perspective.

Lauren Ditchley
*Untitled (Interior 1)*
Photograph
11"x9"

Lauren was capturing the beautiful things happening in the ordinary that were invisible to those of us too busy to notice. Lauren’s work was not about grand and interesting structures, pristine portraits, or forced moments. It was about capturing the small intricacies working in the background, the one thing that nobody notices, and those simple moments in life that don’t necessarily merit remembrance. She had a way of making those things great, and she did it in many mediums.

Lauren Ditchley
*3737 E. Washington St.*
Polaroid
12.75 x 10.75

After a while, she’d force herself to create similar building compositions with a Polaroid instant camera. Not being quite content with the way she framed the building or how the lines moved within the composition, she’d often find herself spending hours on a building or neighborhood and then picking out the best in a bunch of photos to frame and exhibit. Her love of the medium eventually led her to create her own kind of “fauxlaroid” in which she would repurpose those distinctive Polaroid instant film frames and collage her compositions onto them. She developed a crafty way of making these creations that often fooled viewers into believing they were real Polaroid photos.

Lauren Ditchley
*Untitled (Paper Bag 5)*
Photograph
7.5" x 10.5"

Lauren wasn’t only a strong visual artist, she also possessed impeccable sociability. She didn’t just go and break the ice in any social situation, she broke icebergs. She’d draw attention to herself while out in the field and befriend random strangers who were wondering what she was up to. Lauren was good at telling her story and gaining new fans of her art, often finding doors opening up for her or rounding up volunteers to be subjects in her compositions. One of my favorite examples of this is when Two-Thirds hosted an exhibition titled The Gun Show. Lauren went to a gun shop in her neighborhood and got the owner to pose with a variety of guns in his inventory. Later, she walked around Fountain Square getting random strangers to pose for her, flexing their biceps or gun tattoos. These micro-social interactions would eventually pave the way for her social practice.

As an arts educator, Lauren developed an interest in working with people to create art. For several years she was in charge of designing the yearbook for Sycamore School. Each year, she made a great effort to include the students in designing the book. One earlier example of her student work is her collection of “Art Reach” portraits. Each student in the group created a mask from a paper grocery bag, selected a location, and posed for a portrait shot by Lauren. You can see more examples of this subject/artist collaboration in her On the Menu series – a collaboration with artist Brittany Kugler. The two hosted a pop-up event in which anybody could walk up to and create a menu item based on a prompt like “Last Night’s Dinner.” The guests would create the menu items from an assortment of craft items, and then Lauren would photograph them holding their creation.

Art within art, interesting within mundane, and nostalgia within the present is how I characterize Lauren’s work. Her work teaches us to look for deeper meanings within each setting and moment and seize the opportunity to relish in them. She teaches us that every moment is great–you just have to look for that greatness hidden in plain sight.

Lauren Ditchley
*Untitled (Bakery 2)*
Photograph
13"x17"

Lauren & Friends: A Two-Thirds Tribute is on view in the Gallery Annex and features a selection of Lauren Ditchley’s work and works from Two-Thirds artists Daniel Del Real, Katherine Fries, and Christina Hollering.