Laurenne Ross is unlike most UO students. She’s only in class for one term each year because she happens to be a two-time Winter Olympian who spends each fall and winter on ski slopes around the world. We’ve chronicled her Winter Olympic debut in 2014, as well as her return from a brutal injury that almost ended her career less than a year out from this year’s Winter Olympics—but we caught up with her this term to talk about her other passions: music and photography.
UOAA: Why did you decide to attend the University of Oregon?
Laurenne: I live in Bend, so I’m pretty near to here, which is really convenient for me—especially when I’m traveling basically for the rest of the year, like all summer, all fall, all winter. I have the spring to be at home in Oregon, and it’s the only way that I can pursue a higher-education degree without traveling too much. There’s a really great art program here. I’ve been doing that for the last, I think this might be my fifth or sixth year coming here. The program is really wonderful.
UOAA: As a nontraditional student, where do you stay when you’re in class?
Laurenne: Because my season doesn’t actually end until sometimes the day after school starts, or a couple days before, I’ll have a couple days to kind of get it together, but I can’t ever come to Eugene to check out a place to live before I move here and go to school. Sometimes I’ll have a friend or my sister help look for a place, but most of the time when I arrive I just come. I don’t really set anything up. I’ll stay with my sister for a couple days and just go on Craigslist and contact people who need roommates for the spring.
UOAA: What attracted you to the UO’s art program?
Laurenne: I’ve always been drawn to art. I’ve always played music and grew up doing arts and crafts and was really encouraged to do so. I am passionate about other subjects as well. I would love to do math or engineering or psychology, but the way that I’m doing school, I’m only coming one term a year in the spring term, and a lot of those other degrees require you to come for a full year because it’s a sequence of classes that you have to take. My older sister got her bachelor of fine arts from here, so I knew that the program was good. I’m not sure if I’ll pursue art further, like if I’ll go to Grad School for art or if I’ll go to Grad School for something else, but I’m really enjoying it, and I’m getting a great general education as well.
UOAA: Do you have a favorite discipline within the arts?
Laurenne: I connect the most with photography, because it’s a medium that I can travel with. It helps me to see my travels a little bit differently. Instead of going someplace to ski and just getting on the hill and training and getting off and going back to my room and doing recovery, photography forces me to get out and see things from a different perspective. Right now I’m in a large-format film photography class that’s so much fun. It’s an ancient art, and I’m loving it so much. Photography is never going to die—it’s not something like the letter press that is not really an industry anymore. I enjoy how relevant it always is, always has been, and always will be. But, I love everything that I take. I’ve taken ceramics courses and I loved those, and I really like printmaking. I’m in a letter press course right now, and that’s been fun. I’m in a metalsmithing class, which is awesome, and my digital art class that I’m taking is really pushing me and challenging me and showing me the opportunities there are in art in these times. I’ve enjoyed every subject I’ve taken—it’s hard for me to pick one.
UOAA: What do you do with the pieces you’ve created?
Laurenne: I have this shelf in my house where I put all of my ceramic work, but mostly I just give it away as gifts, and I have prints that I give away as gifts. The ones that I really like or that I want to keep in my portfolio I just keep in my basement, I have a spot for art stuff there. But yeah, a lot of the time the work that I’m creating is for somebody else. Like the piece I’m working on in metals right now is specifically for my mom, so I’ll give that to her. Photography doesn’t really take up that much space, especially now since it’s all pretty much digital. I mean I have a lot of hard drives, but it just kind of lingers in my basement. I should really document it better and create a better digital portfolio.
UOAA: What camera are you using?
Laurenne: I’ve been shooting mostly with film over the last year or two. This past winter season I was traveling with a Lubitel 166. It’s an old 120-millimeter film camera. Lomography, a photography company, makes them. I also found a really wonderful old film camera when I was in Prague this winter, so I’ve been shooting a little bit with that. That’s a 35-millimeter. And then I bought a nice digital, a Canon digital camera, like, 10 or 12 years ago. I think I should probably shoot more digital. I don’t know, there’s something about film that makes every photo just that much more special and more intriguing. It really makes you take your time. You just can’t just take 40 photos of the same exact thing. I mean, you can, but it gets really expensive, because you’ve got to pay for each roll of film, you have to pay for the development, you have to pay for the printing and all of that.
UOAA: What types of things have you shot at the UO?
Laurenne: The first project we did was a landscape project, and then the second project we did was an architecture project. Right now I’m working on a profile project, where I’m just profiling different people and taking shots of people, which is nice. I’m not sure what our final project will be, but the projects are pretty open, so you can kind of interpret them how you want. The architecture project gave you a prompt, but you can kind of interpret it how you want. You could take pictures of buildings, or you could take pictures of light posts, or you could take pictures of just cement. So it’s pretty open to interpretation, which is nice. It brings out everybody’s creativity.
UOAA: Do you still play music often?
Laurenne: I don’t really play much while I’m here at school, just because I’m so busy. But I play a lot when I’m on the road. During the winters, I travel with my guitar and I play as much as I can. Normally it’s not for more than, like, an hour a day. I wouldn’t call myself a musician, but I do enjoy playing. It’s just nice to have that balance with skiing, to have something to counteract the stress and the intensity that the World Cup ski racing scene has, so I really enjoy having that music option.
UOAA: Do you jam with anyone?
Laurenne: None of my teammates really play. One of my teammates used to bring her ukulele, and that was fun. I have a newer teammate who travels with her ukulele sometimes, so we’ve been playing together a little bit, but I don’t have anybody that I’m consistently playing with, really. I have a friend in Bend, his name is Raman Ellis. He just had an album come out about a year or two ago, and I’m on a few of those songs on his album. When I’m home in Bend I tend to play with him. If I’m around, he’ll call me. He just lets me know whenever he’s going to do a show and sees if I want to join them. Normally I play violin and sing with those guys—that’s pretty fun.
UOAA: How many instruments do you play?
Laurenne: Three. I grew up playing the piano. I started that when I was really young, like, two or three. Then I started playing violin when I was nine, and I picked up the guitar about 10 years ago. But I’m pretty bad at guitar. I wouldn’t say I’m excellent at any of them, because I’m not able to play them that often, but I play piano, violin, and guitar decently.
Follow Laurenne’s ski career, and see examples of her photography, on her Instagram feed.