Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Laura Williams of Chattanooga, TN

We’re looking forward to introducing you to Laura Williams. Check out our conversation below.

Laura, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
Pure chaos. I have a three year old who loathes waking up. My morning starts with a battle of wills -begging, arguing and wrestling while I get her into her clothes.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Laura Cleary Williams, an artist based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I create large scale immersive drawings and textile installations that serve as an ode to the physical expression of emotional memory. My work is repetitive and intuitive. Using mark making, I build worlds that hover between presence and absence, inviting viewers to pause, look closer, and feel time passing.

Alongside my studio practice, I lead professional development and education at the Association for Visual Arts. I build programs, coach artists one on one, and design workshops that cut through art world noise and give artists practical tools to move forward with clarity and confidence.

Everything I do connects back to a deep love of art. My own practice, supporting artists as they make strong work, and helping them sustain a life around it. Right now, I’m pushing my installations further by layering drawing, fiber, and video, while expanding artist centered programs that champion transparency, momentum, and long term growth.

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
The part of me that believes I have to hold everything together on my own. That instinct was once protective. It taught me resilience, discipline, and how to survive uncertain ground. But now it limits scale, rest, and trust.

Releasing it makes room for collaboration, for asking, for receiving support, and for letting work and community grow beyond what I can carry alone.

What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering taught me discernment. It taught me how to tell the difference between what looks promising and what is actually sustaining. I have made nearly every mistake. I have chased shortcuts, fallen for gimmicks, trusted the wrong advice, and learned the hard way what does not work. Success never teaches you that. It only confirms what happened to go right.

Through struggle, I learned how systems actually function, where power sits, and how easily artists are misled by shiny promises and false urgency. Those experiences gave me clarity, humility, and a deep respect for process over hype. Now I can teach from lived knowledge. I can help artists avoid the traps, ask better questions, and build careers rooted in reality, not illusion.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
’m committed to art as a lifelong practice of excellence. Not trends, not speed, not external validation. Excellence built slowly through attention, discipline, and care. No matter how long it takes, nothing will pull me off that course.

I believe in showing up again and again, refining the work, deepening the questions, and allowing the practice to mature over time. Projects evolve, recognition comes and goes, but the commitment remains. Art is the long game, and I am in it for the duration.

Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. Could you give everything your best, even if no one ever praised you for it?
Yes. I already do.

I see no praise coming my way, at least not for the practice itself. I know that. And still, I show up. I could quit every single day. I could give in to exhaustion, to doubt, to the silence that follows work made slowly and honestly. But every day, I choose not to.

That choice is love. A deep, uninhabiting, never wavering love for the work. Through pain, through the absence of accolades or support, I persevere. Not because it is rewarded, but because it is who I am.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lauraclearywilliams.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauraclearywilliams/