We recently connected with Veronica Lash and have shared our conversation below.

Veronica, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

My proudest achievement thus far would have to be my thesis show.
I graduated from Northern Kentucky University in May of 2023 with a BFA in Spatial Arts and a minor in Digital Effects. I realized I loved ceramics and sculpture while taking the level 100 requirements for a BA. In both academics and normal life, it’s difficult for me to want to do anything long term that I don’t have fun with. My sculpture classes, both in traditional clay and 3D modeling, didn’t feel like a means toward a letter grade. They felt full of potential to express myself in ways I hadn’t yet. I hadn’t felt this way since I started learning digital illustration in high school.
The concept for my senior thesis came from the desire to open myself to others in a way I’d never done before; vulnerable but bold, and with so much love in my heart. I have anxiety, depression, and OCD. I have always been this way, but only started to process it in middle school when I first started seeing a therapist, and further in highschool when I started medication. In my early diagnosis I did not know anyone else that felt the same things I did, which prompted the steady growth of a feeling of strangeness, confusion, and shame that attached itself firmly to my sense of identity.
As I made my way through late high school and into college, I finally began to come to terms with the fact that neurodivergence is not something negative. It’s actually extremely common. I am happier than I’ve ever been after years of work, meeting people like me who love me for who I really am, and finding the bravery to share my feelings and findings publicly.
My thesis was titled “Psychobestiary”. It is comprised of a collection of creatures born with the intention of making physical a few choice experiences I’ve had during figuring myself out. They are fleshy and uncanny in appearance, a reference to how they represent the experiences of a human person. Their symbolic animal characteristics and names are hints toward what emotion or experience they are a manifestation of. The making process, showing, and artist talk were some of the most validating and cathartic experiences I’ve had in my life. I realized I had made the right choice of profession, the right choice of friends, and the right choice of how to see myself.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I know it’s a cheesy answer, but I’ve been making art for as long as I can remember. My Oma taught me to sew when I was around 7, and I have been learning new mediums ever since. As a teenager I got into fandoms, and began both designing original characters for myself as well as taking requests and commissions from others in my online communities. I took a break from this in high school and most of college. I was young, and the potential of online business was overwhelming at the time.
I got into ceramic and sculpture in college. I had done work in clay before, but had never had the facilities and materials my college provided that made it possible to do nearly anything I wanted.
Now that I’ve graduated and consider myself an independent professional, I’m looking into expanding my services online again. Outside of my day job as a pottery instructor I do many things I’d love to offer people, including illustration, functional ceramics, and traditional and digital sculpture. Across all mediums my love of fantasy and worldbuilding is prevalent. My personal characters and creatures reflect aspects of myself that I find difficult to put into words, and so I manifest them physically. Making work for others with similar ideals is a great joy. It feels the same as listening to a playlist of their favorite songs, or watching their favorite movie. In other words, it feels great to be nerds together.
I think what sets me apart is the broad range of artistic knowledge I have across many mediums. It’s surprising how many techniques can be applied across materials, or at least inspire different ways of solving problems that arise. To name a couple examples, learning figurative sculpture has improved my understanding of the human body, and so my humanoid character illustrations have improved. When making 3D models with the intention of coloring them later, you have to break down the 3D surface into flat planes. This is called UV unwrapping. In my mind, it’s basically the same as patterning clothes, and so I understood it pretty quickly.
I can solve a wide array of problems in a variety of ways. And if I don’t know the solution, I love learning new and better techniques and methods to produce the best possible outcome. In terms of artistic development, I am most proud of this sense of curiosity I have for my craft. I love asking and answering questions. It is my goal for myself to always be discovering things about art forms I already love.

For instance, while many of my sculptural pieces are made in ceramic clay, I prefer to make certain parts or treat certain surfaces in ways that are not traditionally “for ceramics”. If they don’t need to be food safe, I paint my beasts with house paint and make thin or delicate parts with Apoxie sculpt for strength. I make large sculptures in multiple pieces and epoxy glue them together later because I’m not as concerned with the purity of medium as I am with executing the project as closely as possible to my concept. They are also less precarious to load into kilns this way. I don’t worry about things cracking or breaking because I can just patch it later. Multimedia methods are not for everyone, but for me personally it removes a lot of the stress and fear of things not working out from the equation. I’ll take that where I can get it.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Art is hard. Being told constantly, with varying levels of scorn and flippancy, that being an artist isn’t a good enough goal or profession is hard. The process of introspection and never ending work to improve both the work and the self is hard. Failing over and over again for the sake of this improvement, yet cleaning up and trying again every time is hard. Being an artist, and not being able to create because you’re so busy trying to earn a living is hard. Art is hard and yet I will do it until the end of my days because it makes me happy, and coming from someone with chronic depression that means it’s pretty important. We can’t not be creative, else we suffer emotionally. I talk with my artist friends often about attempting to find balance between being creative and staying afloat. We all have or had jobs outside of art out of necessity, because while making a living off art is absolutely not impossible, it takes time and effort. Be patient with artists the same way you would be with anyone else in any other career. Offer support when they need it, show up for events when you can, learn the importance of creative people in society. We are a resilient bunch on our own, but support from our community makes us even stronger.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Being able to connect with people who are so very different from me solely because we are both artists is a feeling that can’t be matched. Finding community within one’s chosen medium both in person and online makes opportunity to find friends and better eachother’s craft. Getting to know people who practice different artforms is equally amazing. It’s wonderful to listen to people speak passionately about something they love, even if I don’t understand it fully. They listen to me in kind. Through mutual excitement, we learn new techniques, find more artists to keep an eye on, and encourage each other to improve.

This applies to beginners too. The desire to be an artist makes you an artist. Whenever I teach pottery classes, I am amazed at the happiness it brings me. I never thought I’d want to teach, but watching people find the same sense of wonder and fulfillment from art that I do is incredible. Passing on knowledge is one of the key aspects of being an artist.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://veronicalash.com
• Instagram: _veryvern_

Image Credits

Artist picture taken by coworker, Alondra Biberos. Picture of elephant humanoid group taken by Josh Maier. All other images taken or rendered by me.