Laura Drey is a multi-disciplinary artist born, raised, and based in Houston, Texas.
Her artwork, writing, and performances are rooted in experiences with identity, histories, and generational storytelling of home and belonging. She explores the complexities of race, class, labor, geography, government, and economics.
The influences and experiences of family members who worked on Texas land as migrant farmers and longshoremen along the Gulf Coast are the abstract narratives that inform her material choices. She uses conventional domestic materials such as thread, needles, scissors, and commercial materials used in farming, like polypropylene sacking, burlap, and twist ties, to create materially complex artworks.
Drey draws, paints, sews, weaves, and embroiders textiles into the strands of expansive personal and cultural narratives. Her Mexican-American experiences, intergenerational conversations, familial bonds, home, poetry, and motherhood deepen this expression.
Drey holds an M.F.A. in Studio Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.A. (Honors) from the University of St. Thomas, Houston, TX.
She has exhibited and performed her art nationally and internationally. Her work has been supported by The Warhol Foundation’s Idea Fund Grant for her project, Unsettled Space—by Way of Crops. She was an artist at Arquetopia Foundation and International Residency in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2019. She was nominated for the 2021 Arquetopia Foundation and International Residency in Cusco, Peru, and a designated recipient for residency at Asia Society Texas Center Artist on Site 2021.
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