Leslie Shows' Artist Lecture

At first glance Leslie’s work looks like simple landscape compositions, but they are made up of intricate collages with great detail. The pieces are relatively large in scale, but in order to get a full appreciation of the work they have to be viewed up close. Even the digital close up images she had to show were nothing compared to what I am sure the work looks like in person. I thought it was particularly interesting that she played with using multiple representation of the same thing in a single piece. For example, in one piece she used graph paper to represent salt crystals, and also used real salt water painted on the piece that started to crystallize. She also played with text in some of her pieces, which has always been a debate for me in my own work. In one piece she had segments of dust that were blowing through the air and one of the scraps she used actually had the word “dust” on it. Sometimes I am drawn to the idea of words in a piece but I think at times using legible text can make a piece less interesting. However, for Leslie, her work already has such depth from the elaborately detailed collages that the text adds another layer of interest and is not immediately noticeable. Overall, hearing Leslie talk about her work was an inspiring experience. She is such a young artist and has found a way, through her somewhat surreal subject matter and her mixed media method, to bring viewers into her own imaginary world.