Putnam, Leslie

Leslie Putnam is a London-based sculptor, multimedia and installation artist whose work has been showcased in Europe, Ontario, and Quebec.

Biography Artist's Statement Additional Media: I Keep Trying to Tell You

Leslie Putnam is a London-based sculptor, multimedia and installation artist whose work, comprised of elements found in nature, responds to the experience of how we as humans connect to the natural world. She investigates in the gap between human perception of the natural world, and how humans experience the natural world based on these perceptions. After beginning her professional career as an artist in Luxembourg, she came once again to London to teach and continue her artistic practice. Her work has been showcased in exhibitions in Europe as well as Ontario and Quebec. As an educator for the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB) in London, she has succeeded in using her artistic knowledge and expertise as a source of learning and teaching. In 2008, she contributed to the Making Art Creating Community (MACC) program, a collaboration of the TVDSB and the London District Catholic School Board. Through a series of workshops, youth city-wide participated in individual creativity and community projects. More recently she and her colleague Sue Koudys have started a pilot Art/Science course with support from TVDSB innovates. Putnam has also exhibited her work throughout London, including the Creative Age Exhibition (2014), Sounds Assembling at Museum London (2017) and in Toronto at Nuit Blanche in the Hard Twist 10 Show at The Gladstone Hotel. In 2010 she partnered with David Bobier to create the o’honey collective.

Biography by Jasmine Sihra

SOURCES

Belanger, Joe. “Getting to the art of the matter.” The London Free Press, May 11, 2014. http://www.lfpress.com/2014/05/11/getting-to-the-art-of-the-matter.

By taking iconic elements from the natural world and placing them within the realm of human experience and transversely placing human constructions in the natural world, I work toward community engagement and the exploration of the intersection between the human and natural world. My work attempts to bridge this gap between what we inherently understand as the truth of our relationship to the natural world, and the way we have come to experience it through our own constructed realities. How does one convey that which is tangible in nature through artistic means, and allow for the bridge that emerges between reality and constructed notions of it, to become visible?

Artist’s Statement Courtesy of Leslie Putnam

Leslie Putnam, I Keep Trying to Tell You
Video: Dennis Siren