Alaura O’Dell MFA Creative Writing
Alaura O’Dell, MFA, is an interdisciplinary artist: a writer, sculptor, musician and performance artist. Her career began in 1981, with the London based music collective, 23 Skidoo. In her decades long career, she has collaborated with many distinguished and illustrious artists, film-makers and musicians, whose ground-breaking work influenced the art and music scene of the early1980s through the 1990s, and beyond. She has collaborated with the British film-makers and artists, Derek Jarman & John Maybury, visionary, Dr. Timothy Leary, author of Blood and Guts in High School, Kathy Acker, and multi-disciplinary artists, Peter Christopherson & Genesis P-Orridge. She has performed live with the late DJ/producer Cheb I Sabbah, where she created a live soundscape at the Pete Gabriel Real World after party, alongside Cheb’s extraordinary eclectic DJ mix.
Her solo album, Sacred Dreams, was recorded with electronic artist Justin Beck. Between 1983-1993, she was a pivotal member of the influential British experimental video art and music collective Psychic TV, under the name Paula P-Orridge/Mistress Mix. Her lyrics and liner notes may be found on many of the group’s recordings. O’Dell was a creative collaborator on many PTV projects, including films, music and art performances, and recordings. In Psychic TV she performed as a percussionist, sound collagist and vocalist. The collective toured throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, North America, Mexico and Iceland. They were featured on MTV, The Tube; a British music show, and Spanish TV Show, La Edad De Oro, with a two-hour special solely devoted to a Psychic TV performance and interview. PTV performances at music festivals include: The Berlin Atonal Festival, The Reading Festival and the Finsbury Park Festival, where PTV opened for the headliners, Siouxsie and the Banshees. In 1983 PTV’s support band, KUKL, in Reykjavik, Iceland featured the acclaimed musician and composer, Bjork. As a sidenote Psychic TV were in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1986 for releasing the most records in one year, after attempting to release 23 live albums on the 23rd day of 23 consecutive months.
For close to thirty years O’Dell took a sabbatical from the music industry, although she continued to write fiction and non-fiction, and returned to college. In 1996 she founded her company, Sacred Journeys for Women, and for a decade led groups to sacred Neolithic sites in Great Britain, focusing on women’s spirituality and herstory. In 2013, O’Dell graduated with a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from California Institute of Integral Studies. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Consciousness. She has been featured in RE/Search and published in Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady, alongside Maya Angelou, Anaïs Nin, & Emily Brontë. She was co-editor of Mission At Tenth, (Volume 7) which celebrates the diversity and complexity of the San Francisco Bay Area, while also adding to the inter-arts by publishing emerging and established artists who blur boundaries and extend borders through their work. O’Dell is recently published in The 70s & 80s, Post-Punk Almanac, Part One.
For the first time in decades, on Saturday, December 6th, 2025, in San Francisco Alaura O’Dell will be performing, under the moniker, Mistress Mix, with her longtime collaborator, The Amber Portal, at The Katabatik Festival in San Francisco:
You can read, and watch, current interviews with the artist here:
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