Laura Cesari of California - Fantasy Deco Dreamworld Artist

2023, Invisibility series retrospective! Invisible Woman and Millenium Armchair, actually together in a picture.

2019, in my home in the Pacific Coast Mountains, with Antelope Woman Quilt, an old favorite piece I made in 1998 in a class with legendary artist Faith Ringgold.

2010, with Northern Hemisphere Latitudes necklaces, an infographic jewelry series I designed to measure the distances of the Latitudes, with each bead representing 50 miles, for Chain of Being Jewelry Co.

2009, with my wonderful rescue kitty, said to be a "problematic exotic". Don't worry, she just needed a good cat whisperer. Photo by JP Li.

2008, sittin' in a tree... with my amazing partner Jeremy Richardson.

2005, San Diego. Best weather for block printing! I started the Fabulous Wallflowers series here.

1997, in San Diego, with Invisibility: Millenium Table. Photo by Amanda Byer.

1978, at Laguna Seca Raceway, watching my dad race a vintage car that he and my mom restored. Super adorabeezle jumpsuit by my mom, a longtime designer for Lorrie Deb by Emma Domb of San Francisco.

My great-grandfather, Giuseppe Luccarotti, designed the terrazzo floor for the San Francisco City Hall in 1915, around the time when many of my ancestors came to California from the Mediterranean, Himalayas, and South America. It's immortalized in the hilarious and adorable film 'Bedazzled' in this scene, with Elizabeth Hurley's epic eye-roll and Brendan Fraser's exuberant victory dance, where (spoiler alert!) Elliott realizes he still has his Soul.

Original Lines, Feral Beauty

Inspired by decorative arts, fantasy, and folklore, my artwork is intended to be feral, unrooted, and timeless.

I'm obsessed with making my own original lines, reflecting on the themes I've seen and felt as a 5th-generation Californian artist: I'm an especially big fan of Cali's folk arts evolution from our early-1900's Art Deco to our 1960's-70's Psychedelic Art Nouveau resurgence, and motifs inspired by my roots in the Mediterranean, Himalayas, and South America.

In hybridizing these elements, I've made my own unique multicultural dreamworld of mythical numinae in surreal nature-inspired landscapes that show a harmony and connection between humans, animals, plants, and the Universe.

We grow up on tales of mermaids, angels, dragons, and fairies, and we accept these mythical creatures with a sense of imaginative childlike wonder. I hope my hybrid beings and multicultural deco drawings can inspire people to think inclusively and love each others' differences in the same way that we love mermaids, angels, dragons, and fairies.

Honorable Mentions

My work has been featured by ELLE and ELLE DECOR magazines, The Planetary Society, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Public Radio (NPR), Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art (LACMA), Museum of Contemporary Art of Western Spain (MEIAC), Museum of Modern Art (MoMA New York), and The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

STEAM Collaborations

I love the intersection of art and technology, and I've also worked for many years in graphic design, animation, information design, and interface design, focusing on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) industry clients.

While working as an interactive designer, I started incorporating my fantasy art into open-source software apps: my fantasy theme apps combined have had over 500,000 downloads! (hooray and thank you everypony!) For a few selected examples of my STEAM design work, please visit my Design Page.

Academics

I studied at the University of California, San Diego, with emphasis in Studio Arts and Computing Arts, and earned a Stewart Prize in art study and support from the Russell Grant and U.S. Grants foundations.

Magnanimity & Environmentalism

My official alignment is Chaotic Good; it might even be my religion, though thank Goodness, I don't have to break any laws, because I live in a reasonable land and time. However, I might break some of the rules of traditional arts, or some people's expectations of what an artist, a designer, a model, a computer programmer, or a lady should be. Oops!

I try to work with people and companies who are doing something good for the world. Unfortunately, I've seen that people and companies aren't always what they seem: I have left at least 2 jobs because I felt they were using my powers for evil.

And, I try to give back whatever I can to repair any damage done by anyone from my dumbass family, or really anyone at all. At this time, I'm mostly giving back air, as I protect and live under one-third acre of amazing 220-foot-tall Giant Redwoods that have been calculated to offset a minimum of approximately 450 average dumbass-humans-worth of carbon emissions. And what's so great about air is that air doesn't discriminate, anyone can breathe it! Go trees!

Family History, Legends, and Folklore

Yes, those Cesari! Somehow I'm part of this family of legendary weirdos, and it makes my life both difficult and hilarious.

People sometimes make all kinds of weird assumptions about me owning a bunch of hotels or casinos or pizza restaurants or spooky olde ruins, or luxuriating on a lovely ancestral fortune that was miraculously saved before the empire fell. At first this bothered me, (che casino! haha), but then I realized it was a really great way to filter out assumptive jerks and idiots who didn't pay attention in history class.

So I'm maybe-or-maybe-not related to ancient Rome's controversial integrated first family Julius, Cleopatra, and Cesarion-Jesus; horse whisperer Caligula or party boy Nero or any of the other wacky 12 Caesars; glorious exaggerative renaissance painters Bernardino and Cavaliere d'Arpino Giuseppe; or radical freedom fighter Michelina: in any case, it is my true born name, and I've had to live with it my entire life, and thus I've had to discuss and speculate about these legends my entire life too, and I love them.

In retelling and discussing these wild family legends, I confess, I've developed a severe allergy to hype and thrall, and maybe an unusual tendency to do my own thing. I try to learn from their mistakes, and understand their intentions. Because, weirdly enough, many of the ideals they stood for; about racial integration, universal love, animal rights, gay rights, creative expression, and Chaotic Good; have somehow still proven to be solid today.

Despite all the Cesari folklore and hype, my most famous ancestor who I've actually met is on my Mom's side, my great-grandfather Giuseppe Luccarotti, who designed the terrazzo floor of San Francisco City Hall in 1915, around the time when many of my ancestors came to California from the Mediterranean, Himalayas, and South America. It's immortalized in the hilarious and adorable Chaotic Good film 'Bedazzled' in the scene with Elizabeth Hurley's epic eye-roll and Brendan Fraser's exuberant victory dance, where (spoiler alert!) Elliott realizes he still has his Soul.

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