Lauren Ernst

Artist and pressman at the Freeman Screen Print & Embroidery, Charlotte

Education:
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art with a concentration in Print Media, UNC Charlotte (2015)

After graduating from UNC Charlotte summa cum laude, Lauren Ernst has remained in the Charlotte area, working as a professional screen printer since 2016. For a year she supervised garment screen printing at Contagious Graphics, and from 2017-2022 she was a production manager for Mom & Pop’s Print Shop, where she worked with clients to produce silkscreen prints, letterpress commissions, and direct-to-garment presswork and supervised quality in Pantone color matching jobs. In 2022 she became a pressman at the Freeman Screen Print & Embroidery firm in Charlotte.

Printmaking professor Erik Waterkotte invited Gabriela and her colleague Lauren Ernst to collaboratively submit work along with him for the Generations exhibition in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Department of Art & Art History.  Together they created a shadowboxed abstraction that combines elements of their individual work. 

“Because the print program had four majors in it at the time, we became a tight knit group with lots of opportunity for one-on-one critique between ourselves and with Erik,” Lauren and Gabriela to Associate Professor of Art History Jim Frakes in an interview. “The print studio was always a safe haven for us.”