Lauren Moore’s small and intimate mixed media sculptures are made of what most would associate as cute and girly motifs; long blonde hair, long eyelashes, white teeth, fluffy and smooth textures, and lots of pink hues. However, her work would not be described by many as either “girly” or “cute”, but rather creepy, unsettling, or eerie. The blonde hair, white teeth, and rosy tones we often find to be pleasant, if not beautiful, when arranged in the context of a human, are borderline repulsive when arranged in an atypical fashion. The connotations of the materials of Lauren’s work almost seem to contradict the connotations of the piece as a whole, creating a puzzling and almost uneasy feeling in the viewer.

Moore’s work can cause one to question what we find to be beautiful and why, as well as the importance of the “whole” rather than just its contained parts.  We find human bodies to be generally a very aesthetically pleasing form when all body parts are present and in the anatomically typical formation. However, when fleshy or hairy human-like parts are arranged in a way that strays from the norm, the very same partsshift from creating a very pleasing whole, to a revolting one. Moore plays with the viewers’ perceptions of images that we see everyday, and twists them in an intriguing way that makes us question, what does make something beautiful?