Laurel Burch was an American artist, designer and businesswoman.
Background
Laurel Anne Harte was born in the San Fernando Valley of California on December 31, 1945, to Ann and Russell Harte. She grew up in a broken home; her father married three times, her mother twice. She said in an interview to The Marin Independent Journal in 1995 that as a girl she felt emotionally unstable and untalented. She found some measure of peace in playing the guitar, dancing and drawing.
Education
Laurel left home at 14 with only a paper bag of clothing, and she cleaned houses and cared for children in exchange for room and board. She dropped out of high school and went, “going around singing and playing the guitar,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1986. Laurel was a self-taught artist.
Career
Due to illness Laurel was forced to seek a job that would give her the opportunity to conduct acceptable to her health life.
Laurel began creating jewelry - old coins, bones and beads turned into earrings and necklaces. When she put them on, she has a sense of belonging, even to the exotic world created by her own hands. Fascinated by her ornaments, people on the streets began to ask where she got them.
Her creations have become bridges leading to the friends and customers. Jewelry by Laurel Burch began to spread across America.
At that time she began to paint - pretty childish, very brightly, without complying with the proportions, but her drawings are a direct reflection of the hippie culture. In the world of Laurel there is no violence, cats make friends with the dogs, everywhere are flowers and trees. Laurel started receiving comissions from restaurants, her paintings were bought for private collections.
Laurel’s work was noticed in China, she got several lucrative contracts for her art abroad. Her work was in demand, jewelry - sold throughout the country, thus began a brilliant career of Laurel Burch.
In China, she started working on a line of earrings. Laurel was the first American woman invited to China as an artist and a businesswoman.
She saw herself as a folk artist, telling stories.
In some extent, the meaning of her work has always been to bring together the different cultures and talk about communication with the earth and all living creatures. These ideas are now becoming increasingly popular.
In 1961 Laurel broke her jaw twice. For the first time, when yawning, in the second, when having dinner. After that she could no longer feed herself. She had to be fed through a special tube.
Laurel has always worked incredibly fruitful. Even during long periods of illness, when she had to draw lying in bed or sitting in a wheelchair, she seldom put off brush aside.
On September 13, 2007 Laurel Burch died of complications from bone diseases.
Quotations:
“In our fast moving, changing world we need characters that would remind the constancy of the spirit world.”
"We can thank our lucky stars when once in a blue moon we find rare and kindred souls along the pathways of our lives."
"May you find in the nectar of life, the sweetness of hope in your heart, feel the comfort of song birds in your soul, the grace of new wind in your wings. Color you sprirt with rainbows and shower gold dust in your hair. Time heals. Life renews. Dreams take flight again. close you eyes and drink it all in."
"How enriched life is by friends! Good friends, new friends, old friends, feathered friends, feline friends, friends of friends."
"I live within the vivid colors of my imagination, soaring with rainbow-feathered birds, racing the desert winds on horseback, wrapped in ancient tribal jewels, dancing with mythical tigers in steamy jungles."
Connections
At the age of 19, Laurel married a jazz musician Robert Burch. Laurel gave birth to a daughter, and after a while - a son. Marriage, however, soon fell apart, and Laurel became a young single mother. Burch's second marriage, to Jack Holton, also ended in divorce. Her third husband was Rick Sara.