Laurel Herbold

About Laurel

Laurel Herbold is a Cleveland, OH based freelance artist exhibiting and providing custom art and mural services throughout Northeast Ohio and the surrounding area since 1994. Often in collaboration with interior designers, engineers and architects to develop site-specific artwork, her process begins with conceptual design and results in skillfully customized artwork, mural and faux/specialty finishes for residential and commercial spaces. She has maintained her studio/gallery space at the popular West 78th St. Studios since March 2011 and is always available for consultation and private tours of her gallery collection.
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She is also the creator of The Wee People. Her stylized paintings and ink drawings of tiny silhouetted figures has expanded into a wide range of fine art as well as a growing line of merchandise and collectables. The universal theme of unity and the whimsical nature of her work makes them ideal for many custom designs and public installations.
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Her paintings displayed in this exhibit hover between abstract and surreal, and showcase Laurel’s love for precise organic form and a unique and engaging use of color.“I am considered a painter, but I believe that striving to be a well rounded artist involves being familiar with as many mediums as possible. Due to the varied nature of my custom work, over the years I have found myself becoming educated in the applications of ceramics, jewelry fabrication, stained glass, gold leaf application, oil, acrylic, watercolor painting and some 3D work. Being faced with an array of creative challenges from my clients leads to a great deal of experimentation with many different materials and continually expands my creative process. Viewers will notice a strong abstract or surreal quality to my work, but I am almost always inspired by the unparalleled design and elements of nature.”
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Come and visit Laurel’s studio/gallery #107 at 78th St. Studios on Cleveland’s west side. The building features a giant indoor art walk on the third Friday of each month. For more information or to arrange a consultation, feel free to contact Laurel at laurel333@gmail.com

Meet Our Curator

Dott Von Schneider

Toast has always been a favorite place to gather and have open dialogue on a myriad of subjects over exceptional food and spirits. The kitchen and front of house care deeply about the place and it shows! It's a rare thing to walk into a place and feel immediately at ease. It's cozy and comfortable, like a favorite sweater. I am honored to be a part of the Toast family through the visual art program that offers patrons an opportunity to feast with their eyes as well as their minds. Jill offered me a dream situation to exercise my curatorial muscles and I am forever grateful for that.

As an artist, my work is embedded with memories of place and time through printmaking, painting and drawing, as well as installations. By using non-traditional materials, I am integrating a physical sensibility within a continued thesis on the vibrations and spiritual content of the Earth. A personal iconography is sewn into the work through the inclusion of items that I collect from the ground in specific locations which then are reassigned to a new context. Soil, rocks, bone, rock salt and other natural matter are combined with man-made products such as glitter, primer, motor oil and industrial foam, as well as using certain art media in unconventional ways. The works are intended to be tactile and gestural. Based in landscape and abstraction, the images often relate to the feeling of wandering and open spaces. Having lived and traveled extensively in and outside of the United States, I am interested in the spoken history and tangible elements that stand as remnants for a community.

In addition to my studio practice, I curate exhibitions throughout Cleveland and am a freelance visual arts writer.