Fensterstock has worked as a curator throughout her career. Most notably she served as the interim director at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the Maine College of Art,[13] the director of Hay Gallery (Portland, ME),[14] as the Exhibitions Developer for the Saco Museum (Saco, ME),[15] and as a guest curator for several exhibitions nationwide.[12]
Fensterstock has written for a variety of publications including Metalsmith Magazine,[16]Maine Magazine,[17]Art New England,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]Maine Arts Magazine,[30] and numerous catalog essays.[31][32][33][34][35][36] In addition to writing, Fensterstock served as the Maine State Editor for Art New England from 2005-2007, and the Associate Editor for Arts Guide Portland from 2005-2007.
Selected series and artwork
Precious Heirlooms 2004-2010
Fensterstock’s training in metalsmithing and jewelry dominated her early work that centered on conversations about adornment, beauty, preciousness, and ephemerality.[37] In her series Precarious Heirlooms, Fensterstock utilized such materials as potatoes, bananas, and soap, setting precious stones and pearls in the materials. The temporary nature of these base materials changed the pieces over time; the soap dried and cracked, the potatoes shriveled and grew tendril-like sprouts, and the banana rotted, turning black and deflated. Fensterstock documented these changes, referring to them as What Happens.[37]
Third Nature 2007-2014
Fensterstock’s long-running series, Third Nature utilized the process of quilling (curling and shaping fine strips of paper that construct decorative designs) which she combined with material such as Plexiglas and charcoal to create enclosed standalone sculptures. After purchasing her first home, Fensterstock was struck by how specific her ideas on how her garden “should” be.[38] This led Fensterstock to research historic landscape design and theory, how people have interacted with the land through such implements as the Claude Glass, and how people actively shape the land around them.[39] The result of this research is Fensterstock’s series Third Nature which is marked by its “monochromatic iterations of nature and gardens”[40] that are enclosed and contained in various boxes, vitrines, and wall panels.
This body of Fensterstock's work moved away from the quilled floral designs that marked her long-running Third Nature series and her installation work, and towards "cavernous pieces that imitate stalagmites and stalactites."[46] Fensterstock explains the impetus for the shift in work for Interview Magazine:
For the last few years, I've been doing a lot of work with paper and looking at the history of garden designs, the ways different styles represent different ideas about man's role in the world. The differences between a Baroque garden and a picturesque garden represent two completely different world views. I kept coming across garden grottoes, which are artificial caves, and I became obsessed with them because it's this blend of culture and nature. It's in a natural space, but it's really an augmented natural space. Sometimes they would take, in the 18th century, a cave and reform it, cover the entire surface with shells or another kind of ornament, and create a space that really merged nature and culture.[46]
With this new body of work also came new materials; shells coated and dripping in black rubber replaced the daintily curling paper to create ominous stalagmites and stalactites. The first piece of this series, Stalagmite, debuted at Pulse Miami in 2015.[46]
The totality of time lusters the dusk 2019–present
Fensterstock was invited to create a site-specific work for the 2020 Renwick Invitational, Forces of Nature, at the Smithsonian. The work, The totality of time lusters the dusk was informed by the 16th-century illuminated manuscript the Augsburg Book of Miracles. On October 13, 2020, she was a speaker at the virtual preview of Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020.[47]
Selected exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
2015 Lauren Fensterstock, Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
2015 Stalagmite, PULSE Project at PULSE, NY, NY
2014 New Work, Lauren Fensterstock, Independent Art Projects, North Adams, MA
2014 Preparatory Drawings, Aucocisco, Portland, ME
2013 Lauren Fensterstock, Sienna Gallery, Lenox, MA
2010 Of Groves, Labyrinths, Dedals, Cabinets, Cradles, Close-Walks, Galleries, Pavilions, Portico's, Lanterns, and Other Relievo's: of Topiary and Hortulan Architecture, Walker Contemporary, Boston, MA
2009 New Projects, Washington Art Association, Washington Depot, CT
