Exploring Consumption and Waste Through Alluring Artwork
Lori Larusso: Painting Food, Waste, and American Consumption with Graphic Precision
Contemporary American artist Lori Larusso has built a compelling visual language that explores consumption, consumerism, waste, and identity through deceptively simple but deeply thought-provoking compositions. Based in Louisville, Kentucky, Larusso’s work transcends traditional still life by merging vibrant, graphic imagery with sharp social critique. Her practice spans two decades and includes paintings, wall installations, and mixed-media works that connect food, culture, and aesthetics in uniquely subversive ways.
A Consuming Passion
Since the early 2000s, when she was completing her MFA at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Larusso has placed food at the center of her artistic investigations. With an eye for the absurd and a talent for lush, cartoon-like rendering, she painted desserts like melting chocolate cones and frosted coconut cakes with unusual precision and flat, unblended acrylics. These compositions were more than whimsical—they were quietly critical, offering commentary on indulgence, waste, and the aesthetics of consumer culture.
Her wall installation “A Pastiche of Good Intentions and Other Parties” (2019), displayed at the KMAC Contemporary Art Museum in Louisville, clearly illustrates this tension. In it, Larusso arrays visually delightful yet conceptually disturbing pieces, such as broccoli stalks arranged into a poodle’s coiffure. The juxtaposition of comedy and critique has become a signature element of her artistic voice.
The Art of Noticing
Larusso’s latest works build on her long-standing themes and prepare the stage for her first solo museum exhibition, A Paradox of Plenty, opening in August 2025 at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
One standout from her recent output is “Bourbon Rocks on Red” (2025), a painting of a whiskey glass formed from interlocking palettes of red, brown, pink, and tan. Its abstraction flirts with representation, framed in bold color relationships reminiscent of Ashbery’s phrase: “fence-sitting raised to the level of an esthetic ideal.” In this piece, and others like it, Larusso challenges the viewer to reconsider representations of the ordinary by precisely orchestrating visual harmony and disrupting it with conceptual tensions.
Reclaiming the Female Image
Another powerful series, Ladyface Vase (1–14) (2024), draws on the kitschy 1950s and ’60s ceramic head vases made by Betty Lou Nichols. Originally adorned to look like Hollywood starlets such as Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe, these vases exude stylized femininity and consumer desire. Larusso’s versions are updated, showing the vases filled with wilted or freshly blooming flowers—symbols of decay, beauty, and transience.
Through this work, Larusso unpacks the lasting effects of the male gaze, glamour culture, and the commodification of female identity. While lovingly rendered, the painted vases carry an edge of eeriness that critiques nostalgia and manufactured aesthetics. They question what society chooses to idolize, highlighting beauty standards rooted in fantasy rather than reality.
Still Life, Still Relevant
Larusso’s still lifes are rarely still in meaning—they bubble with political and ecological undertones. In “Midden” (2025), she paints a deer with its stomach cut open to reveal a harrowing array of waste: a computer keyboard, lipstick tube, plastic utensils, a waffle. It’s a haunting reversal of humanity consuming nature; instead, nature consumes humanity’s indestructible leftovers. The deer becomes a victim of excess and thoughtlessness, making the viewer question our collective ecological footprint.
Similarly, “Binge and Purge” (2025) shows a pile of objects beneath a spilled shopping cart: a teddy bear, a coffee pot, work gloves, pantyhose packaging. Are these newly bought items or discarded debris? Larusso treats the ambiguity between product and waste as intentional, underlining how capitalism’s cycle leaves waste that’s often more durable than its goods. Her meticulous attention to packaging and object design underscores this commentary, suggesting that society is less interested in the utility of objects than in the thrill of acquiring them.
Beyond Aesthetics: Critique Without Didacticism
Despite the layered meanings in her work, Larusso eschews overt declarations. Instead, she allows viewers to draw their own conclusions. Her conceptual subtlety is her strength—she invites reflection, not instruction. Whether through whimsical animal-food hybrids or unsettling object arrangements, Larusso frames her themes within an accessible, visually engaging structure.
Her dedication to studying the aesthetics of everyday life—through carefully crafted color compositions and satirical but empathetic subject matter—makes her work resonate across disciplines. Her paintings recall advertising’s seductive appeal while slyly subverting it, functioning as both art and mirror to society.
An Artist for Our Times
As Americans reckon with overconsumption, environmental degradation,