Lauren Napier

At the opening of the Bern shop in March 2024, we were privileged to exhibit Lauren Napier’s paintings for the first time in Europe.
In addition to the exhibition, Lauren graced us with an acoustic session.

I had met Lauren a year earlier, when she first arrived on Swiss soil, during two dates as a duo with Vic Ruggiero “the Witch and the Burro”. I’ve been following Vic and his other band for years, and was very curious to see another side of him. The first night was magical, the combination of these two voices was incredibly powerful. The second night wasn’t on my agenda, but as no tickets had been sold in advance, I couldn’t pass up a second chance to see this emotionally-charged concert. I grabbed my friend Ben and we ventured out to Thune… We spent a wonderful afternoon with the artists, touring the town, and then in the evening, we headed to the alternative café bar Mokka. This time, they made me cry. What an incredible concert. The way back was really difficult. I didn’t want to go home.

And here we are, a year later, a year in which I’ve stayed in touch with Lauren, and this time the idea was to combine an art exhibition with an acoustic session. The fact that we were opening a new shop in Bern was a bit of a surprise, a stroke of luck. All in all, here we are 2 days later, with stars in our eyes, still debriefing the great opening night we organized in Bern.

• Would you like to introduce yourself?

My Name is Lauren Napier and I suppose I try to create a realm of softness with my Art.

• How do you define yourself as an artist?

I define myself as an artist as someone who doesn’t know another way to exist.
I have worked at a publishing house, broadcast journalism, retail at h&m, and other places but I guess none of them were helping me to give back to the world, or anything that happened to resonate. Other than the journalism because that is storytelling and words and I can put together stories that way but all of those things made me not enjoy the world around me or the humans around me. Through publishing, obviously not just books, I love books. They were glorified coffee tables books and it wasn’t doing anything for the greater good. I spent all day talking to different glossy magazines and it felt empty. So as an artist I can give something back honest – and hopefully inspiring and cathartic – back to other people.

• Which countries have you toured or exhibited in?

I actually played my first show in Germany in Berlin. At Boxi Platz – Artliners cafe. Great place. My first acoustic show, I’d been bands before that in the states. But my first solo show in this style was in Berlin.
While I was living in Berlin, I played in the Czech Republic and Austria which are still places I continue to play. But since then I have played in Switzerland, my second time here but first time solo. And it’s been beautiful so I certainly hope it’s not the last.
Belgium.
I try to go to smaller out of the way places like the Navajo Reservation and play at the Diné college. I like having these more intimate moments and they happen in more out of the way towns.
And then as far as my artwork, I’ve exhibited in Washington and California. This is my first time internationally. It’s very exciting. And then in the states, I go all over. Not the middle as much, but Arkansas to New York to Nashville to California to Washington. I’ve covered a lot of ground.

• What about Hawaii or Alaska?

No actually. But Alaska and Hawaii are both really hard to get to.

• How do you become an artist?

My mother has always supported any artistic venture I was undertaking.
That was music first. But I remember her sending me to an art camp where we got to sculpt and make plates and porcelain.
And sent me to this great science camp, where you got to go spelunking, and pet snakes.

But professionally, in terms of music.
I have always been involved with the cello and symphonies and such.
So it’s been natural to form a band or play music with people. And the guitar became necessary to share my solo songs, a vehicle.

Art, that was an accident. It happened during Covid because I couldn’t play shows anymore. And I had been painting and shared one on social media and someone messaged me and asked if they could buy it. And I said sure, if you want it.
And then a market reached out and it took off from there. It was an accident in the end.

• How do you define your art? (Painting)

Labels are always hard, huh?
Surreal desert art.
I play with shapes and sizes and things. Sometimes a rabbit is bigger than a cactus and the raven skull is bigger than the bunny. I have painted some other things but it really does have a home in the sand.

• What inspires you?

Everything. Everything that I can take in. Everything I see. Anything I hear. Conversations I have.
I mean for a song it can be something that I read in Frida Kahlo’s diaries or it can be: I have had half a song written after hearing this homeless man screaming outside of my bedroom window in Tacoma one night. It wasn’t at me, just screaming in his cloud of craziness: “I’ve got nothing to do but sit around and stare at god at you.”
So the world around me.
Painting in particular. I like the way the different shapes fit together whether that is a triangle and the moon or a raven skull and the tail of a cat. I like the way that things can intertwine.

• Quickly something about the colors as well?

I love pastels. So at first my paintings were just these palettes of pastel pinks and teals and sea foams and different soft colors and I missed that darker side of me. So I started adding these big black lines through these paintings, it adds a contrast. It’s soft, but is it?
Sometimes you are adding text or some stones?
I do collage because words are very important to me. As is apparent in my
Journalism and music. I like words.
Sometimes a quote or a song lyric will inspire me and I like the way the text fits or winds around a snake skeleton. It can loop in and out of an eyeball. And the repetition of words also.
And the silver, I like to add pieces of the desert to my art. Wings of Schmetterlings. Or silver from an abandoned mine.

• What would your dream exhibition look like?

I want a giant life size cactus.
I would love to sculpt a giant pink cactus with a raven hanging off of it.
I have been trying to encourage my friend Claude to do it but I don’t think he’s enthused about a giant cactus.
Why, Claude, why?
But I would love to do something that involves the entire space whether that means hanging 3d raven skulls from the ceiling or installing a couple cactus or sand on the floor.
Or we could have the cactus girls in body paint standing around like cactus.
Actually, that would be a great music video to have the girls body painted like cactus and dancing in the background.

• How would you define your music?

That’s a funny one because everyone slaps a different label on me.
Last night I was folk noir, which I like. In Berlin, it says pastel goth folk. I don’t mind that either.
If you look at every noise, I’m western Americana but then I’m traditional ska because people who listen to Vic listen to me.
But I have called myself folk noir, dark folk, Alt country – that suits. sad girl, but I think I might be sticking with pastel goth folk. It’s a mouth full, but it suits.

• What is the worst label you have seen?

Female-fronted band.
Because that’s not a genre. All women don’t make one sound. So yes, i’m a female in a band, but that doesn’t mean you know what I sound like. Female-fronted country band is different but female tells you nothing about what I sound like.

• What is your fondest concert memory?

I have two.
The most,
One of the most important and emotionally important that I ever played was on the reservation at the diné college. We were able to play songs for them and they shared some of their holy religious songs with us. They are not allowed to be recorded for religious reasons, so it’s the only time you’re gonna hear it unless you are a part of the tribe.
And then the others just purely based on the show was at Brani piano salon in San Francisco. And I had a piano accompanist and I got to sit on top of the piano like Judy Garland, and they had candles lit all around. And I was in a chair on top of the piano.

• And in Europe?

The other night at Renaissance was extra special. It was the only night where I have been able to and invited to share both my art and my music. I haven’t gotten to share my art and my music and wholly share myself as an artist like that. That was a first.

• How do Europeans react to your music? Americans?

Very politely – in the most wonderful of ways. Americans have become –
Becoming jaded might be too generous.
(When someone thinks they have seen everything before)
I think saying they are jaded would be too polite. It’s a choice. They are choosing not to interact or choosing to treat live music as a soundtrack to their bar night.
And it was recently in Seattle, well within the last five years, I saw Brian Fallon of the Gas Light Anthem – play. People were talking over him and he said “excuse me. Just trying to do my job up here. Sorry to fucking bother you.”
Something clicked for me. And he was grumpy. But he has a right to be. He is doing his job. As a touring artist you have traveled hours to get there that day to play for an hour, two hours to people who have paid to be there. So you think they could be quiet for you and others for half an hour and be present and listen. And they don’t. You can hear, as a performer, everyone’s conversations. Which is fine at a dive bar or a Kneipe. And you do wanna do that, go have a beer outside and a conversation. And European audiences are incredibly respectful that when I play house shows in Berlin. If I haven’t played for a long time, I see them trying to gently and silently open beers. So as not to disturb. An American would never do that. They’d pop their beer and belch . And so, it’s a beautiful different to me. It’s about being quiet. It’s largely about respect.

• What would your dream concert be like?

Something like last night in Basel, it had aspects. Candles on the tables. Moody lighting. Plants hanging from the ceilings.
I think I’m realizing I just want to play around plants. I just want to start touring with cactus.
Cactus and candles that’s the name of the next album.
And personally I would like to transfer my songs from guitar to cello. So that exists in my dream concert world. Lots of candles. No over head light.
Just. Candles.
In a church. Or an amphitheater. Something like that.

• What do you think from people with smart phone?

I understand that they are attached to everyone, that they have become our third hand. They’re obnoxious. If it keeps you quiet, but I have seen people looking at a real estate listing, and not the band. Or playing Tetris. While mudhoney is playing. 
That’s a different form of disrespect. You could go home and do that.
And I have also heard when people take a video, I hear them listen to it while I’m playing. But then again you can’t totally bite the hand that feeds because it does do wonders for social media. If someone is taking videos they are probably uploading them which is showing your music to other people.
When you’re a photographer, you can only take pictures for the first three songs.
I think that could be a good smart phone rule. For the first three songs you can do whatever you want and then maybe we can just be quiet for the rest. Or maybe the last three. Just some limit. 
I’ve been to shows where they take your phone – comedians like to protect their sets. It’s a little strict and you have people who need to check with a babysitter and other reasons to need your phone. There has to be a happy medium. 

• Which Instrument do you play ?

Piano. Cello. Guitar. And I have been playing a three string cigar box guitar lately. Vic has been trying to convince me to play the harmonica. But it’s a little  aggressive and my corner is about softness. And I’ve been fiddling around with the accordion lately. I have a 1950s lil half size thing. She’s really sweet. I would like to get better at that. 

• What are your upcoming projects?

I’m finishing up a poetry album right now. I haven’t done such things before but I have been wanting to create a poetry album that isn’t just speaking. So it’s poems with singing, weird cello, spooky slidey guitar notes. That’s coming out on vinyl with a poetry book to accompany it.
I have a goth jazz project which has a member of the goddamn gallows and one from Willhaven who came in with Moog. There’s a song about Bisclavret, the French werewolf. Sacakawea, the Native American guide who took Lewis and Clark across the Pacific Northwest. And it’s very spooky. 

• What is your relationship with Goethe’s language and Country ?

I lived in a German speaking country until I was seven. And then we moved back to the states. My father was in the military.  But after that, in my own, I really wanted to learn Kafka’s language because the world that Kafka writes in is so surreal. If you read it in an Übersetzung, you’re not getting it.
That and Mittelhochdeutsch, it’s a beautiful language. 
And then you get stories like Tristan und Isolde and the Wagner ring cycle.

• What are your next trips?

New York in April to visit Paul in Reagan youth. 
And then in June to the desert with Vic. 
And in Europe, next year. But earlier in March to Switzerland, there are parades to see and Papier mache masks that I need to see in action.

• Do you have any tattoos? Would you like to tell us some stories about your tattoos?

This one I got for brno, the capuchin monk crypt. It’s the scythe of death and an hourglass with bat wings. is inspired by their phrase “go forth and do not delay good and important things”
Which isn’t just for good deeds, but for living life, go forth and live life. So when I saw this in brno, I went back to Berlin to my tattoo artist there: Nick and asked him to create something. It’s my favorite pieces but the one that I see the least because it’s on the back of my arm.

And this one matches with my mother.
It’s a tattoo artist in Berlin from Spain, Andy Ma. He does beautiful dot work. This took about five hours, he’s one of the most meticulous artists I have ever worked with. I had found his work when I was looking for vegan artists. I didn’t want dead animals in my skin, which might be a good reason to get them removed. 

It’s the tree of life with a pentagram as the trunk. And he drew this based upon my momma’s idea. This representation within a circle. 

A few links:
Nick
Andy Ma – dot work
Claude
Lauren Napier