Guest Artist – Laura Repnak
June 5 @ 8:00 am - July 26 @ 5:00 pm
LAURA REPNAK
Guest Artist, June / July 2025
Laura moved to Billings from Pennsylvania two years after graduating from college with degrees in English and philosophy. While the reason for the move soon dissolved, she stayed and earned a master’s degree in Special Education. She eventually married and raised two lovely daughters. Laura taught Special Education for ten years and English at Billings West High School for twenty-three years, retiring in 2020. She still misses her classroom and remembers fondly her many wonderful students.
Laura believes the origin of her mixed media work comes from her classroom at West and an extensive, rather fantastical forest she made from tissue and other paper that covered the entire back wall. It eventually included frogs, lizards, butterflies, and stuffed animals (some her daughters had won at the fair; others she “borrowed” from one daughter’s vast collection). The whimsical nature of that wall is what she’s aiming for in her art.
While Laura’s first pieces were made only of paper, she soon added acrylic paint and then other materials. She’s always trying new ways of using paper—layering, burning, molding, carving. Most recently she started marbling paper, some of which she’s incorporated into pieces.