Laura Molina

Laura Molina was born in East Los Angeles in 1957. After graduating one semester early from Arroyo High School in January of 1976, she participated in the theatrical training program at the Inner-City Cultural Center, Los Angeles, studying acting and performance technique with mentors C. Bernard Jackson and George C. Wolfe. In 1979 she was accepted into the Character Animation Program at the California Institute of the Arts. She studied art and film making with 2 annual scholarships from the Walt Disney Studios. During the early 1980s she fronted Tiger Lily, an all-female rock band while supporting herself by painting billboards in the traditional technique, oil paint. She continued working as a professional musician until 1990 when she was hired as a Scenic Artist at Walt Disney Imagineering. She worked prolifically as a scenic artist and animatronic figure-finisher in motion pictures, television and theme parks from 1989 until 2005. In 1991 she decided to focus her acquired technical skills to the Visual Arts for self-expression. Subsequent projects have included the "Naked Dave" series of paintings, and a self-published comic book, "Cihualyaomiquiz the Jaguar", featuring an avenging Mexican-American super heroine. In 2004, a documentary short film, "Naked Dave" was made about her artistic obsessions by film makers Alex Schaffert and David Callaghan. Although Laura had appeared in many student and low budget films since the 1970s, she began to take acting and film making seriously as her next creative vocation in 2005.