YouTube art maven Lauren Nash on creative addiction and the Bob Ross mystique

By Erin Ryan

Thursday, Aug. 11, 2011 | 2:10 p.m.

Lauren Nash’s head is busting with dark whimsy. Cunning ravens whisper their secrets, blood-red ribbons tug at unseen winds, the moon melts, and Nash’s own freckled face breaks through ground between bare trees.

“There’s this world in my head,” she says, “and I want to share it with everyone.”

It’s a surreality the Las Vegas artist has shared on paper and canvas since she was 10, and through the unique lens of YouTube, exhibition has become education. Nash’s channel, Transient Art, is a creative well and tutorial art archive. She borrowed her dad’s camcorder in 2008 to record her very first show, and he has yet to get it back.

Chances are he doesn’t mind. Transient Art has evolved into a compelling cultural phenomenon, the essential YouTube success story (albeit on a smaller scale than Rebecca Black or that guy who introduced the world to his annoying, talking orange). The YouTube overlords must have agreed, because they and their official partners at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts selected Nash as one of only 20 participants in the inaugural Creator Institute, designed to help promising content creators master new media. Ten went to a site in Chicago. The other 10, including Nash, spent a month earlier this summer at USC. In addition to receiving $1,000 for new video equipment, she didn’t have to worry about tuition, airfare or living expenses while taking in wisdom from world-class faculty and experts ranging from YouTube sensation Freddie Wong (of FreddieW fame) to Twilight series screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg. (She did, however, invest in some Crest Whitestrips and write an endearing blog about using them.)

“I took away storytelling. I was self-taught with almost everything else before I went to the institute, but I didn’t know about the basic process of storytelling. It was so simple, and I felt kind of silly afterward,” says Nash, whose experience was somewhere “in the middle” of a classmate who made his first video a couple months before the institute and another who had been working in LA’s film industry for a decade. “Now I’m trying to make a story out of each artwork and each episode.”

The two newest installments of Transient Art make a case for how much Nash has grown even since June. Taking her viewers through the self-portrait illustration process in Episode 41, her quietly charming delivery is spiked with punchy tip/quip graphics, humorous asides, stop-motion interludes and musing on material and meaning. It’s the sweet spot between “happy little trees” and a quality instruction book.

“It’s sort of like a Bob Ross segment in that it’s very personal. I talk to the viewers, breaking the fourth wall,” she says. “I talk about what the work could mean and symbolism, the art and design. I’m also hoping to show people how to look at art, highlighting parts of it and explaining the composition … I want to help bring out the creative side in people.”

But getting their attention is harder to do today than it was when Nash launched Transient Art. There is so much more content on YouTube and other user-driven sites that it makes Nash’s growing following seem pretty incredible. With minimal promotion, she has more than 500 subscribers, more than 10,000 channel views and total upload views in excess of 55,000. She says these are specks compared to what top YouTube creators are netting, but she doesn’t care much for metrics.

“I care about the 10 people who really enjoy my videos vs. the 10,000 who don’t really give a damn,” she says. “You know?”

Nash shouldn’t be surprised, however, if her hundreds of faithful multiply to a figure in the thousands. In her extensive search for YouTube collaborators she has yet to find anyone posting art videos in the same vein, a positive and a negative considering her ambition to build a dynamic instructional network. For now, she relies on her husband Jonathan, who shoots video, arranges sets, watches sons Jude (3) and Jacob (1), and makes cameos as a stagehand/sidekick. Nash says he is both her biggest supporter and best constructive critic.

Professional critics have probably browsed Nash’s work at local First Friday events. She is seeking gallery engagements, although keeping up her YouTube channel and website is a full-time job. She used to post a new video every three weeks, but she recently set a goal of a new episode/artwork every week.

“Having a deadline keeps me going … In some ways it makes me become more creative,” she says.

It’s hard to imagine how a woman who sold her first commissioned piece at the age of 13 could become more creative. Her wood shop teacher paid $100 for the portrait and lavished her with praise, no doubt making her parents feel better about swapping her piano lessons for private art classes. The encouragement she received from him and other mentors over the years has sustained her commitment to art and the hope it will become a real “job.”

Thanks to the Creator Institute, Nash is now an official YouTube partner, meaning she is a vetted content provider who can make money from her posts. One of her videos was featured on the Creator Hub next to heavyweight Michelle Phan, the most-subscribed woman on YouTube for her makeup tutorials, an experience Nash called “crazy cool.” Her channel’s progress is being closely tracked, and there’s no telling what opportunities may lie ahead.

Even if nothing changes, Nash will be happy just to have a place to deposit the contents of her head, not to mention her heart. Her artist’s statement reads:

Making art is as secondary to me as breathing. It comes naturally, and even if I try to stop I feel obligated to create more. Looking at art and creating it makes me feel invigorated. I like to create different concepts and am constantly changing and growing. I feel that the art today I make isn’t the same as the art I will make tomorrow, which is I why I call my art transient. I make art to strike emotion, not to please.