Leslie Fry

My art ranges from intimate drawings to public sculptures to street performances. Starting with such basic human needs as food, shelter, clothing, and touch, I connect the natural and the constructed worlds. Among diverse inspirations are the body/spirit unity in Gothic cathedrals, Czech puppetry, Italian Mannerist painting, and Elizabethan poetry.

My public projects respond to site, history and the body. Figures are female or hermaphrodite, of imaginary descent, often melded with animal, architecture, and plant forms. I create sculptures about transformation that draw on Jung’s “collective unconscious.” Placing the sculptures in public spaces lifts them into our collective consciousness. An ongoing project is a semi-public sculpture garden next to my studio in Winooski, Vermont. I work toward an ideal: a garden full of colors, scents, birds, and planted edibles for both animals and people, to be experienced with all five senses.

Hands, a long-time focus of my art, stand in for the self in recent bronze and resin sculpture. Meanings change as the hands gesture release, acceptance and other associated states of being. My hands create forms that permeate the work with a sense of human touch. I model with clay, wax, or plaster. Unless clay is fired, I then make molds and cast with materials as various as concrete, resin, paper pulp, bronze, and rubber.

Often working between sculpture, photography and collage, I place cut-out paper images in different environments to photograph the resulting ephemeral interventions. This low-tech, performative process creates unexpected nature/culture juxtapositions. These theatrical images are printed on aluminum or stay in situ for later discovery. I also draw, paint, and print on paper and fabric.