When you ask LouLou what one word would describe her, she says “artist.” All her adult life she has made sure she had a designated space to create her art – whether a corner in her room in Japan, or a separate studio in her current house in Del Ray. Yet it was years before she had the confidence to embrace the title “artist.”

 

LouLou grew up as a free-range child in the 1970s with all the outdoors as her playground. Nature’s mysteries were an integral part of who she was, and they continue to be integrated into her art through found objects like seeds, twigs and leaves. In her early years, she studied calligraphy and flower arranging in Japan, influencing her later explorations in asemic writing and fiber arts. During a graduate year in Switzerland, she continued her studies in expressive calligraphy and written drawings.

 

But these things come with a price. “I couldn’t afford fancy supplies, so I made my own brushes out of twigs and pine needles. That limitation turned into freedom—it pushed me to discover my own language of marks,” LouLou says. The Japanese script intrigued her, but she couldn’t understand it well, so she began mark-making to express what it seemed to her. She realized this wasn’t a limitation but a new way to expand her artistic expression.

 

After a divorce and move, she decided to explore career options and studied international non-profit management in graduate school. She became a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan and Romania. Later, she started a job with the local non-profit, Empowered Women International. Art became a stress release from her job, and she learned to balance her day job with artistic expression. She was delighted when her art was displayed in several area group shows.

 

She remarried, moved to Del Ray, and on a trip to Laos with her new husband, fell in love with the Laotian people and their culture ‒ later bringing their textiles to the US for sale under the name Indigo Lion Handmade. She admired that their art was from the earth itself. Weavers grew the cotton that was spun into thread, then naturally dyed from local plants.  

 

LouLou also explores photography; her photos have focused on close-ups of tree bark patterns, leaf compositions and tangled branches. She also writes about her creative process and other musings on her blog.

 

When she is not in her studio, LouLou works part-time at Studio PAUSE in Arlington, a community space for art and stories. For the past year, she’s been focusing on creating a new body of work, “which is about weaving together all the strands of my journey—mark-making, fibers, collage,” she said. “It feels like bringing my past and present into conversation on the canvas.” An exhibit of this new work will be on display at Studio PAUSE in February. See her art and writing at https://marylouisemarino.com