Dirty Folk Art & Ephemer with Lou Schad! www.dirtyfolk.co
Artist's Bio
Lou Schad is a visual artist working in painting and ceramics with materials gathered directly from the natural world. Her practice centers on the use of wild foraged clay and pigments derived from botanical sources, such as acorn dye indigo, and found petals, positioning the landscape as both source and collaborator. Through slow, process-driven methods, Schad explores how materials hold memory, place, and the imprint of human touch.
Trained as a fiber artist, Schad earned a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and completed additional studies in painting and drawing at Parsons School of Design. Her early career in costume design and visual storytelling cultivated a deep sensitivity to material behavior, embodiment, and the relationship between objects and living bodies—sensibilities that continue to shape her studio practice.
Schad’s work is informed by cycles of gathering, preparation, making, and return. Clay is dug, processed, and shaped by hand; pigments are extracted, cooked, and layered, allowing color and form to emerge through time rather than control. These methods resist permanence and perfection, emphasizing care, use, and ecological awareness as it plays with and against our own human nature..
Alongside her studio work, Schad has long engaged in creating spaces of hospitality and community, an ethos that quietly underpins her artistic approach. Her paintings and ceramic forms function as vessels—holding trace, presence, and nourishment—inviting viewers to slow down and attend to the material intelligence of the natural world.
She lives and works in, and is deeply in love with the Central Coast of California.
Artist’s Approach
Through my observations, paintings rendered from bouquets of wildflowers offer both subject and pigment. The dance of the flowers becomes a memory and therefore, I am able to capture the energy of the moment, the active nature of flora and my work becomes a moment of nostalgia meant to inspire play and reconnection. Clayworks are both traditional and primitive. My wild clay series is made from foraged clay and campfired to offer fire markings and capture the energy of our earth. Traditional pieces (commercial clay, kiln-fired) hold the same primitive nature that will continue to bring the artist's hand into our daily lives. All of my work celebrates handmade, natural and unmanaged landscapes (both small/inner and vast/object). Each piece offers a sense of memory, a recall into the middle distance of one's life, a place to breathe and reconnect.
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