Leah St. Lawrence is an art critic, new media curator, NewHive advocate, and chair enthusiast. St. Lawrence writes about and curates contemporary new media, digital interaction, and online engagement—specifically related to political/social/LGBTQI issues.

Digital media’s intersection with art is the new contemporary critical practice. The meme as an instant snip of information passed across screens now represents an entirely transient culture of artistic expression. These works present themselves as intangible and are therefore un-reliant on traditional galleries and resistant to commodification. With newhive, tumblr, youtube/vimeo, behance etc. now hosting works in “cloud galleries”, progressive artists can operate outside of the plastic arts. The plastic arts are not dead - yet - but leave us wanting. the evolution from photography -> replication -> video art -> virtual and social media has become my area of focus because it is our new vehicle of self expression. Like Baudelaire’s elevation of ‘the every man’, society today elevates the digital presence as integral to our everyday functions. We are saturated in a period of the arts in which the artist re-presents their identity as a digital manifestation of expression and shares it globally.