Featured Artist: Leisa Rich

Leisa Rich is an experimental visual artist with a background in fiber art. She transforms materials in unique ways via sewing, dyeing, painting, melting, sculpting, heat transfer, embroidery, 3D printing, laser cutting, resin and more.

Rich has a Master of Fine Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts, and Bachelor of Education in Art degrees, has exhibited in notable museums and galleries, and won numerous awards. She is a published author. Rich has also taught art for 48 years.

Rich’s works are in the permanent collections of Delta Airlines Inc., Hilton Hotels, Inc., Emory Healthcare/Women’s Health, Kamm Foundation, Dallas Museum of Art, University of Texas, University of North Texas, The Works: Atlanta, and in international private collections. In October 2020, in the middle of political upheaval and Covid, Rich virtually purchased a 96-year-old farmhouse on three acres on a rural St. Lawrence River island accessible only by ferry, and moved back to Canada after decades living, teaching, and exhibiting in the U.S. and abroad.

SAFE ZONE

“At age 4, after many lonely months spent in a hospital bed, completely deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other, I got to go home. My father brought one large and four small electrical cable spools from his shop. He set them up to create a table and seating under a massive weeping willow tree in our backyard that was so big its branches swept the ground. Within it, I had my own private sanctuary. I hosted tea parties for my dolls and bears and played for hours there, the only sounds the whispering branches and chirping birds. It was a good day when a parent, or friend, joined me inside my world to have tea.

I was called to visual art at age 15 and have been working since on recreating the powerful healing that I felt inside that willow enclave: referencing animals, flora, and fauna, building surroundings that cocoon, designing interactive environments, finding creative ways of provoking childlike wonder in myself and others. It is my hope that I might give viewers a respite from the dark and unknown. The works in Safe Zone are also a plea for humans to care for the earth, respect its fragility, and work on changing our habits so that we might stave off our own extinction.

Moving back to Canada in 2020, after decades living in busy U.S. cities, to a section of Howe Island’s “Old McDonald’s Farm” - 3 acres on the St. Lawrence River in Ontario, accessible only by ferry, with no retail, no doctors, nothing! - thrust me into an immersive, 24/7 commune with raw nature, something I hadn’t truly had since a child. For the last 2 years I have put into my art the fiery fox fleeing something chasing him across the river ice, the sweet, white-tailed deer skittishly grazing our hill that shyly watch as we talk to them, poisonous hogweed that slyly mimics Queen Anne’s Lace but can blind you if you touch it, coyote howling, giant, crackling ice shards on the riverbank, buzzing bees, croaking frogs, and the burst of flowers that come up after the last snow. We have removed all fossil fuels, converted most of the lawn to wildflowers, planted dozens of trees, grown vegetables, and continue our 35 years’ long practice of not eating animals. We dubbed our property safe for all animals, vowing never to kill any of them. That includes the mice we humanely remove from the house!

This intensely personal show utilizes many repurposed materials that have a history: vintage textiles, mixed media, found clothing. The techniques used include free motion machine embroidery (thread painting), sewing, dyeing, quilting, crochet, trapunto, sculpting, heat embossing, laser cutting, 3D printing with biodegradable materials, and more.

We all deserve a good life.

-Leisa Rich

Leisa Rich CV