Laurie and Jason Frasier have lived all across the U.S., from New York to Portland to San Francisco to Berkeley, where they now call home, but their love story all started in Gainesville at the School of Art + Art History.
The two met in Ron Janowich’s Experimental Painting class. “Jason was the friendliest guy,” Laurie remembers. “He would go around the class and talk to everyone about their paintings. I would always look forward to him coming to me.”
Laurie was in the Graphic Design department and Jason in Painting. “He hung out at the ‘Ashtray’ with most of the other people in his department, so I would always try to walk by and look for him,” says Laurie. “Our first date was at an art party, and we joined a drum circle together and swung on a hammock—so Gainesville.”
After graduating in 2000, Jason moved to London while Laurie continued her final year at UF. During that time the two decided that they didn’t want to be apart anymore, so they started their adventure together.
“Having no family near us has been a challenge and some people probably call us crazy, but I like to think we are just adventurers,” says Laurie, noting that they have learned the most by the places they have lived and the people they have met along the way. “Life is too short, why sit still?”
Jason is now design director at DesignMap in San Francisco and Laurie is a designer at the University of California, Berkeley. They have two girls, Siena, 6, and Avery, 4.
