​

 

 

Birthday Gurl likes to imagine what the world would be like without predictability and without perfect order so that her creativity can pour out the poetic beauty from a vision of cathode ray tube portals channeling into colors from a fairy tale universe in the story's absence.

 

Laura Grace Robles is Birthday Gurl, a video artist, poet, Experimental Art Filmmaker, singer song writer and actress born in San Antonio Texas. Birthday Gurl is inspired by the psychedelic hidden world of dreaming and its appropriation to the mystics that transcends the visual language into a translation and transformation of experimental video art and film , spoken word, theater, improvisation, film in conjunction with spoken word.

 

Birthday Gurl started out as a theater camp drop out who began writing short scripts for her high school theater arts club during holiday shows playing the sexy Miss Santa. All while along side her mother, her theater director, and  during her Mother’s pregnancy, Robles assisted in  leading the cast through rehearsals for the United Interscholastic League One Act Play competition.

 

Robles played lead roles in plays like William Shakespeare’s ; Taming Of The Shrew as Katarina and Mary of Lanie Robertson’s; Insanity Of Mary Girard. Later  playing the role of Titus from  Homer’s Odyssey. Winning prestigious awards like All-Star Cast and Best Actress. as well as many other scholarships for her community service and leadership skills like the Hispanic Heritage Scholarship which was awarded to her by Jesse Trevino. As well as the LULAC scholarship, and the Coca Cola Scholarship for academic excellence . 

 

In 2003, Robles begun her research at San Antonio College with Eduardo Rodriguez and Mark Pritchett before transitioning to a professional artist , taking Advanced Painting 1-III, Drawing 1 and II as well as Sculpture 1 and II.  Including black and White photography with Kemp Davis and Digital Photography, Voice and Acting 1. 

​

In 2004 Robles was invited to attend the Jeane Claude and Christo Gates EXhibition, reception and private lecture and attended.

​

Eventually when she started studying art at the University of Texas at San Antonio with Leslie Raymond and Ken Little, she realized she wanted to create a type of visual poetry as a professional video artist who used spoken word to combine with exhibited video installation and musical performance for galleries and museums. 

 

In 2006 during her studies at UTSA she was awarded 1st place in the Multi-Media category in The College Of Liberal Fine Arts Spring Research Conference. Robles also supported her self with work study programs such as a Ceramics Technician, Computer Lab Technician  as well as  playing a part in the Audio Visual Dept. at San Antonio College.

​

 Birthday Gurl  also showcased her work for well known artists and national and international acts at live musical performances for Rakim the 80’s hip hop legend, Gordon Raphael the producer of The Strokes and Grammy award winner, Marcel Rodriguez Lopez of The Mars Volta.  Birthday Gurl also showcased during the opening acts for The Octopus Project, Com Truise and Machinedrum.  The artist’s experimental video art poetry and experimental art films have been featured in the Straight Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival from 2018-2020, as well as selected by The Art Film Awards in Greece of 2021 and the Indie Wise Film Festival as a finalist.

 

In 2013, at the Luminaria Arts Festival in San Antonio, Texas, with large-scale outdoor projection on the Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center, Birthday Gurl had the privilege of showcasing her video art titled Color The Stars during a musical performance by Ledaswan, in downtown Hemisphere Park.

 

In 2018 Birthday Gurl teamed up with a group of visual artists and Ila Minori to perform their music and showcase her  series of digital prints titled Acid Pop of video stills, and her projections at Presa House Gallery.

 

In 2019 and 2020 Robles was asked to display her video poetry using single-channel projection to showcase alongside a spoken word performance by herself and other artists like Mystic Frequencies and many other musicians like DYA, Ila Minori, Dae  Feour and Thomas Lahomme a spoken word poet during a synthesizer battle at Texpop, The South Texas Museum Of Pop Culture in San Antonio, Texas.  The event celebrated The Straight Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival, a film festival organized by Birthday Gurl and UK’s underground experimental film director Fabrizio Federico. The event also showcased  mostly synthesizer based electronic music and LGBTQIA art.

 

 

In 2022 Mystic Frequencies and Birthday Gurl Collaborated with Artist and Curator Robert Tatum  for the Blue Koolaide Love Show a Valentines Day themed art show. Which was titled after Birthday Gurl’s poetry book Blue Koolaide. The show consisted of many artists such as Rubio, Gary Sweeney, Robert Tatum, Ila Minori, and spoken word recited excerpts of The Blue Koolaide poetry book by Thomas Lahomme . Other musicians like Rufus Rufasu and his music project Living Instinct played live  to projections in the background and two other video installations by Birthday Gurl. This Art show celebrated the special joining of Mystic Frequencies and Birthday Gurl and the love poetry behind it. Exhibiting sixty four heart paintings which she created during this time.

 

In February of this year 2023 Birthday Gurl  continued to celebrate the heart shape and meanings with strong inconico symbolism allowing the heart to represent a take on other forms that meant Latino’s learning  forgiveness, faith in ones self, peace, self acceptance, hope and healing, would bring us courage by believing in this symbolism of the heart. As their protector of strength through their trials and tribulations each heart painting had poems  written out  and hung underneath each thirty eight heart paintings at Augustine Cellar’s Studio located at Blue Star next to his vintage shop. 

 

This Valentines Day themed art show was titled We Love Unicorns which was meant to be for the heart shape meaning and the unicorn of rarity  to be symbolic in many of the same ways as a message of all  Latino’s, LGBTQIA and or minority having inner beauty and strength within no matter their social class.

 

Birthday Gurl also starred in two foreign films, one titled Pregnant, directed by Fabrizio Federico, a film about the world’s addiction to technology. The other was a film titled Mondo Lizard A Guide To Gonzo Cinema, a film about risk taking pioneer filmmakers and video artists who paved their way through the punk cinema movement.