On Dennis Leon
by Chris Johnson
I have a very clear memory of when I first met Dennis Leon.
We were in the Administration Offices of the California College of Arts and Crafts and I had just been hired to teach my first college course as a 27 year old photographer who had never taught before.
From the way he was dressed, Dennis might have been a workman or a plumber. That is until you heard his voice. Dennis spoke with a British accent, always an advantage here if you want to make an impression, but there was a force, a clarity and high intelligence in what he had to say so you instantly knew you were in the presence of an extraordinary person. But the most important and striking thing was that Dennis asked me if I liked to play ping pong. As it happens, I am a ping pong fanatic and thus began a long and close friendship and collaboration as fellow artist/citizen educators at CCAC. Yes, we played countless games of ping pong in his studio in Oakland, but it was from Dennis that I learned what it really meant to devote as much commitment to the care and growth of your students, as you do to the integrity of your studio practice as an artist. Those two devotions were organic parts of the same process and Dennis did both of these things at the highest possible levels.
Over the years, Dennis and I would work together on countless academic projects for the College. He was Chair of the Sculpture Program and I Chaired Photography so we worked together on broad curricular projects and systems of faculty governance but most important to Dennis was the care and attention he gave to the individual students who worked with him and shared their lives.
One of Dennis’ students, Jennifer Kaufman said this about working with him: “What made Dennis such a special teacher was that... he was kind of like a place himself. He was a place where I could explore things that really mattered to me, that I hadn’t found a place for previously. “
Dennis Leon was a vast and powerfully inspiring place. Beyond his dedication to artmaking and teaching, he extended remarkable generosity to those he trusted and held dear. I have another vividly clear memory of when I first came into the presence of the depth and scope of Dennis Leon’s creative process:
Dennis invited me to walk with him through Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve where for years he had worked secretly on hidden earthworks intended to surprise and inspire wonder in hikers who stumbled upon them and noticed that something special had happened to the raw natural spaces around them. To get to some of these works you had to walk up and away from the park’s given pathways. Once there you could notice that there were odd asymmetries, curiously shaped surfaces or, perhaps historic patterns of stones and soil that suggested that either nature had taken its time to craft something special, or perhaps you were simply imagining that you had discovered an unexpected gift.
One of the favored arguments of theists is that you can see the presence of God the Designer in any sufficiently complex natural form: Like coming across a watch on a beach and knowing that it had to be the creation of some supreme being.
I’ve always imagined Dennis standing in front of any natural surface: a stone face, a tree or piece of wood, the surface of water and being in awe at its complexity and beauty. To faithfully render the surface of a stone or tree and then shape it into a unique form; or to excavate a hillside so that it inspired reflection on divine natural order. These begin to get at what motivated Dennis’ mastery of bronze casting and all of the other sculptural processes that make his artworks so precious.
And then there are Dennis’ large-format drawings and paintings in pastel and crayon—works that are far more than pastoral landscapes. They reveal an integral connection between the vast forces of nature—cloudforms, shifting light, encroaching darkness, uncertain weather—and the deep currents of human feeling and perception. Dennis’ graphic works embody this linkage and bring the infinite variety of potentials of feeling into your presence when you see them.
Finally, one brief anecdote will give you a sense of Dennis—the human being and the social animal that he was. One evening, he hosted a gathering at the beautiful studio he had built, the space where he worked and lived with his beloved wife Christin Nelson. Dennis cherished the presence of dear friends, family, and fellow artists—those who could share love, wine, and conversation.
It was at one of these evenings that I witnessed something that left a timeless impression— something that revealed the depth and richness of his inner life. Prompted by I don’t remember what, Dennis suddenly began to recite The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot. Not from a book, but from memory. As his voice filled the room—measured, haunting, and intimate—it became clear that this was not performance, but presence. Each word was alive in him. He was the speaker and the soul behind the speaker. It was as if the poem had found its perfect vessel in that moment—where the boundaries between art, intellect, and feeling dissolved.
That was Dennis. A man whose vast creative gifts were inseparable from his profound humanity.
*
Chris Johnson is a photographic and video artist, educator, curator and writer. Chris studied photography with Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham and Wynn Bullock. He has been a Full Professor and now Professor Emeritus and for 11 years he served as Chair of the Photography Program at the California College of the Arts. His photographic artwork has been published and exhibited widely and in 1996 he originated the Question Bridge concept with a video installation he created for the Museum of Photographic Arts.
In 2025 the California College of the Arts conferred upon Chris Johnson an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts.
Plate 1:
Log Piece #7, 1983, pastel on paper, 30 x 44 1/2 inches
Plate 2:
Aegean Isle 645, n.d., bronze, 7 5/8 x 13 x 9 inches
Plate 3:
San Mateo Coast Looking South, 1986, pastel and pencil on paper, 15 1/4 x 30 inches
Plate 4:
Urban Stones #5, 1988, collage and pastel on paper, 60 x 89 inches
Plate 5:
MacDowell #19, 1981, pastel on paper, 21 x 30 inches
In the Land: The Art of Dennis Leon
Human engagement with the land around us has been a constant since the beginning of our species. With the migration and expansion of humanity across the planet over several hundred thousand years, our relationship to the land developed into one of both reverence and fear, brought about by the powerful natural forces and apex predators that had the power to kill us seemingly at random. In Europe, and later the U.S., this led to an ideology of conquering and subjugating nature to be under human control in order to make survival and growth of the population easier. While this ideology has never gone away, with the spread of settlers of European origin and heritage across North America, and the parallel rise of the industrial revolution, an urgency to protect and preserve areas of land from commercial development arose in the United States.
In the realm of art, up to the middle 20th century outdoor sculpture in the U.S. and Europe was primarily about either placing sculpture on, in, or near buildings, civic plazas, gardens, and cemeteries. This includes the construction of large architectural “follies” or structures with symbolic significance on large private estates. In all of these cases, the settings for sculpture were fully curated by the human hand prior to the placement of the work. With the rise of the Conceptual Art movement in the 1960s, artists began to think about the structures of the commercial art world, including galleries, museums, and traditional places for placing art, and how they might work around or subvert them. One of the resulting developments was the creation of the Land Art movement (also known as Earth Art).
Land Art took several different forms. Agnes Denes famously planted and harvested 2.2 acres of wheat in the Battery Park landfill next to the World Trade Center in New York in 1982. Walter de Maria (1935-2013) constructed the Earth Room on the second floor of a building located at 141 Wooster Street in Manhattan. Robert Smithson (1938-1973) constructed the Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake in Utah. In 1969 Michael Heizer cut Double Negative into the eastern edge of Mormon Mesa in southern Nevada. Bonnie Ora Sherk (1945-2021) created temporary “parklets” in disused urban spaces in San Francisco as a form of performance in 1970, and in 1974 created Crossroads Community (The Farm) at the southern edge of the city’s Mission District. The overarching theme encompassing this group of artists was one of dialogue between highly urbanized spaces and those seemingly untouched by human intervention, with a predominant need to create permanent monumental works.
Another group of land artists emerged in Britain, among them Richard Long, David Nash, and Andy Goldsworthy, whose motivations were different. For these artists, long distance walks in nature and using materials found along the way to make sculpture were integral elements to their artistic ethos. Instead of carving into the land to build permanent structures that have social, political, and/or environmental readings behind them, Long, Nash, and Goldsworthy embraced nature as a collaborator. Their sculptures are often ephemeral, poetic, and integrated into their surroundings such that they could be overlooked by passersby. It is in this genre of Land Art that British born, American artist Dennis Leon’s (1933-1998) sculptures, collages, and pastels are situated.
The works in Collage, Pastels, and Sculpture 1975-1990, were chosen from the heart of Dennis Leon’s career with the intention of showing the diversity of media he worked in and how they relate to each other within his oeuvre. The flowing, sloping forms of the bronze sculpture Aegean Isle 645 (n.d.) echo the shape of the hillside in the nearby pastel titled San Mateo Coast Looking South (1986). There is also a relationship between Aegean Isle 645 and Leon’s large-scale collage, Urban Stones #5 (1988), with its stacked layers of pastel colored, torn paper forming the arrangement of piled up rocks. Another bronze sculpture, Untitled (n.d.) with its rugged surface and valley like depression in its center echoes the V-shaped composition found in Dune Cliff (1985).
Another area of consideration when selection works for the exhibition was to find pieces tied to specific sculptural projects Leon executed in or on the land itself. Once Leon had selected a location to make an intervention in the land, he would spend hours at the site learning its every nuance before executing the work. For many of his projects, Leon would create pastel drawings to visualize the placement of a sculpture or installation in the landscape. Log Piece #7 is a study for a proposed bronze sculpture of a log to be situated jutting out from a hillside in the Bay Area. MacDowell #19 is tied to Leon’s MacDowell Colony Fellowship, where he created site specific work in the forested hills outside of Peterborough, New Hampshire.
Like many of the Land Art works of Long, Nash, and Goldsworthy, Leon’s sculptures and installations were often ephemeral, sometimes only lasting a few hours before human hands began dismantling them. But with others, especially those made of bronze or utilizing stones found at the site itself, the goal was for his artistic mark to feel as it had been a part of the land for millennia and had been only recently revealed by the erosive processes of time. This melding of art with the land itself, mimicking the textures and passages of time on their surfaces, evokes a sense of wonder, poetry, and the revelation of deep truth. In a way, it is its own form of monumentality, but one focused on nature as the monument itself.
Turning back to the pastels, bronzes, and collage in the exhibition, each equally conveys the monumentality of nature. Every stroke and scribble of pastel carries within it the drama of the land and the forces at play in the natural world around us. Each pebbly depression and gritty transition in the patinaed surfaces of Leon’s bronzes renders at an intimate scale the topographies of vast, craggy mountains and rock formations. It is this epic feeling in Leon’s works that allows them to timelessly transcend the aesthetic trends of the day and live forever in the realm of the sublime eternal.
Greg Flood June 2025
Plate 6:
Little Landscape #58, 1986, pastel on paper, 15 x 17 1/2 inches
Plate 7:
Light Shift, 1980, pastel on paper, 30 x 41 1/2 inches
Plate 8:
Untitled, n.d., bronze, 8 7/8 x 8 3/4 x 7 1/2 inches
Plate 9:
Dune Cliff, 1985, pastel on paper, 30 1/4 x 44 1/2 inches
Plate 10:
Untitled, n.d., bronze, 4 1/2 x 12 x 6 1/2 inches
Plate 11:
Untitled, n.d., bronze, 9 3/4 x 15 3/4 x 3 inches
Exhibition Checklist
Plate 1: Log Piece #7
1983 pastel on paper
30 x 44 1/2 in.
Plate 2: Aegean Isle 645 n.d.
bronze 7 5/8 x 13 x 9 in.
Plate 3: San Mateo Coast Looking South
1986 pastel and pencil on paper
15 1/4 x 30 in.
Plate 4: Urban Stones #5 1988 collage and pastel on paper 60 x 89 in.
Plate 5: MacDowell #19 1981 pastel on paper 21 x 30 in.
Plate 6: Little Landscape #58 1986 pastel on paper 15 x 17 1/2 in.
Plate 7: Light Shift
1980 graphite and colored pencil on paper
30 x 41 1/2 in.
Plate 8: Untitled n.d.
bronze
8 7/8 x 8 3/4 x 7 1/2 in.
Plate 9: Dune Cliff 1985 pastel on paper
30 1/4 x 44 1/2 in.
Plate 10: Untitled n.d.
bronze
4 1/2 x 12 x 6 1/2 in.
Plate 11: Untitled n.d.
bronze
9 3/4 x 15 3/4 x 3 in.
DENNIS LEON
Born 1933, England, UK
Died 1998, Oakland, CA
EDUCATION
Honorary Doctorate, California College of Arts & Crafts, Oakland, CA
MFA, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
BFA, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
BS, Education, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
TEACHING AND PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
1972-93 Chairman, Sculpture Department, California College of Arts & Crafts
1967-70 Director, Sculpture Department, Philadelphia Museum College of Art
1959-70 Faculty, Philadelphia Museum College of Art
1959-62 Art Critic, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, PA
GRANTS, AWARDS, AND FELLOWSHIPS
1994 Keynote Speaker, The Glass Art Society, Seattle, WA
1993 Distinguished Faculty Award, California College of Arts & Crafts
1984 Marin Headlands Art Center, Sausalito, CA
Djerassi Foundation Fellowship, Woodside, CA
1983 Djerassi Foundation Fellowship, Woodside, CA
1982 MacDowell Colony Fellowship, Peterborough, NH
1979 National Endowments for the Arts
Yaddo Artist Residency, Saratoga Springs, NY
1978 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Golden Gate National Recreation Area
1967 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, New York, NY
National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 Dennis Leon: Collage, Pastels and Sculpture 1975-1990, Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1993 Cheryl Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1992 Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
1991 Chemeketa Community College, Salem, OR
Anne Reid Gallery, Ketchum, ID
Cheryl Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Butters Gallery, Portland, OR
1990 Dennis Leon, Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
California State University, Fresno, CA
1989 Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
1988 J. Noblett Gallery, Sonoma, CA
1987 J. Noblett Gallery, Sonoma, CA
1986 Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1984
1982
Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1981 San Jose Museum of Fine Arts, San Jose, CA
1979
Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1978 Galleria D’Arte Del Cavallino, Venice, Italy
1977 Hansen Fuller Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1973 James Willis Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1971 Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia, PA
1970 Kraushaar Gallery, NY, NY
1968 Kraushaar Gallery, NY, NY
1966 Kraushaar Gallery, NY, NY
1965 Henri Gallery, Washington, D.C.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2016 The Poker Game and its Circle, Group Exhibition, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA
1997 In Their Nature, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Rental Gallery, CA
From Plastic Form to Printer’s Plate: 16 Contemporary Sculptor/Printmakers, Exhibits USA, Western Washington University Gallery, Bellingham WA
1996 From Plastic Form to Printer’s Plate: 16 Contemporary Sculptor/ Printmakers, Exhibits USA, Texas Tech University, Forum of the Visual Arts, Lubbock, TX
From Plastic Form to Printer’s Plate: 16 Contemporary Sculptor/Printmakers, Exhibits USA, Loveland Museum, CO
1995 From Plastic Form to Printer’s Plate: 16 Contemporary Sculptor/Printmakers, Exhibits USA, University of North Texas, Art Gallery, Denton, TX
Facing Eden: 100 Years of Landscape in the Bay Area, M.H. de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA
1994 Dennis Leon and Morley Clark, J. Noblett Gallery, Boyes Hot Springs, CA
The Romance of the California Landscapes, San Jose, CA
1993 The Romantic Landscape, Holmes Fine Art Gallery, San Jose, CA
Metal Sculpture, California State University, Hayward, CA
1992 Sixteen Sculptors, Oliver Art Center, Oakland, CA
1991 Monochrome, Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
1990 Woodblocks, Etchings, Lithographs, Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
The Undiminished Landscape, Security Pacific, San Francisco, CA
A Natural Order, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY
Against the Grain, Oliver Art Museum, Oakland, CA
1989 Quiet, The Oakland Museum, CA
Topography, Fuller Gross Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Off Site: Artists in Response to the Environment, Richmond Art Center, CA
1988 Private Reserve, Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Drawings by Ten, Mandeville Gallery, University of California, San Diego
Professors’ Choice, Claremont Colleges, CA
Bay Area Sculptors, University of California, Davis
Bronze Sculptors, Walnut Creek Art Gallery, CA
1987 Bay Area Drawings, Richmond Art Center, CA
1986 The Impression of Drawing, Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1984 New Impressions, World Print Council, San Francisco, CA
1983 Resource Reservoir, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA
1982 Affects/Effects, Philadelphia College of Art, PA
1981 California: The State of the Landscape, Newport Harbor Art Museum and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA
1979 Recreation, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA
1977 America ‘76, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Bicentennial Department of the Interior, CA
1976 Bicentennial Exhibition, Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA
1974
Male and Female, University of California, Davis
1973 California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland
Ball State University, IN
1966-73 Kraushaar Galleries Group Shows, New York, NY
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS (cont.)
1972 Curator’s Choice, Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA
1970 Peale House Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, PA
1969 Third Kent State University Invitational, OH
1968 Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY
Temple University Music Festival, Philadelphia, PA
1967 Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, DE
National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
1966 University of Colorado
National Drawing Exhibition, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA
Temple University, Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park, PA
Sculpture and Painting Biannual, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
1965 Beaver College, Glenside, PA
1964 Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA
1963 Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA
1962 Temple University, Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park, PA
OUTDOOR INSTALLATIONS
Sutro Baths Suite #1, #2, #3, and #4, 1975, San Francisco, CA (no longer extant)
Berkeley Pier Piece, 1976, Berkeley, CA (no longer extant)
Payless Piece, 1976, Rockridge Shopping Centre, Oakland, CA (no longer extant)
Mount Tamalpais Piece, 1976, Marin County, CA (no longer extant)
Vacant Lot Piece, 1976, Berkeley, CA (no longer extant)
Path Piece, Tilden Park, 1977, Berkeley, CA (no longer extant)
Oakwood Valley Piece, 1977, Marin County, CA (no longer extant)
Stone’s Piece, 1977, Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, Oakland, CA
Tri-Out, 1979, Grizzly Peak, Berkeley, CA
Sticks and Stains, 1979, Grizzly Peak, Berkeley, CA
Sibley Mound, 1980, Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, Oakland, CA
Sibley Perch, 1980, Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, Oakland, CA
Megan, 1981, Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, Oakland, CA
Djerassi Piece, 1983, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Woodside, CA Tree Trunk Piece, 1986, Greenwood Village, CO
Gaea, 1991-1993, Oliver Ranch Foundation, Geyserville, CA
Untitled, 1992-1993, Oliver Ranch Foundation, Geyserville, CA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2025 “ART UP: Dennis Leon @ Paul Thiebaud Gallery,” Berkeley Times, May 22. 2014 Zimbardo, Tanya, “Dennis Leon: Site Works in the Bay Area,” January 6, SFMOMA Open Space. 2002 Rodriguez, Juan, “Dennis Leon at 555 City Center,” Artweek, September, vol.33, no.7.
2000 Schumacher, Donna, “Natural Resonances: Dennis Leon,” Sculpture (Washington, DC), January/February, v.19, no.1, pp.8-9.
1995 Baker, Kenneth, “Dennis Leon’s Rough Bronzes,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 24.
1994 Leon, Dennis, Keynote Address: Thoughts of an Object Maker, The Glass Art Society Journal.
1993 Baker, Kenneth, Haines Gallery, San Francisco Chronicle, January 9.
1992 Baker, Kenneth, “Sculpture Meets Graphics in Oakland Show,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 12.
1991 Baker, Kenneth, “Wood Sculpted into Dreamlike Stone,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 23. Jenkins, Steven, “No News from the Woods,” Artweek, March. (illus.)
1990 Baker, Kenneth, “Wood Sculptures as Faux Geology,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 7. (illus.)
1989 Appleton, Steven, “Between the Pictorial and the Sculptural,” Artweek, October 7. (illus.)
Baker, Kenneth, “Fine View at Landscape Revival Show,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 30, p.C-5. (illus.)
Baker, Kenneth, “Quiet Art that Sounds Off in Talent,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 8, E-4. (illus.)
Brunson, Jamie, “Turning Down the Volume,” Artweek, July 15. (illus.)
Solnit, Rebecca, “Landscape as Cultural Solution,” Artweek, September 23.
“The Galleries,” Los Angeles Times, September 22.
1988 Muchnio, Suzanne, “The Galleries” section, Los Angeles Times, May 20, part IV, p.12.
Welzenbach, Michael, “Ed Paschke & Dennis Leon,” Artscene, May, vol.7, no.9, pp.21-22.
1985 Baker, Kenneth, “Freeway Landscapes Paintings at Speed,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 23.
Donohoe, Victoria, “Tyler Exhibit Showcases its Alumni,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 26, On Galleries section.
1984 Miedzinski, Charles, “Art on the Headlands,” Artweek, January 14.
Regan, Kate, At the Galleries, San Francisco Chronicle, May 15, Datebook section.
1981 Albright, Thomas, “Odyssey to a Sculptor’s Vision,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 4, p.36.
1979 Albright, Thomas, “Environmental Art Brought Indoors,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 4, p.34.
1977 Frankenstein, Alfred, “Different Views of Sculpture,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 28, p.49. Dunham, Judith L. Artweek. May 1, 1977, p.16.
Linhares, Phil. “Dennis Leon,” Visual Dialogue, 1977.
1973 “Paul Allman’s Eye to Art Who?” New Vistas, October 13.
Frankenstein, Alfred, “Bob’s Best Face Forward,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 12, p.57. Hershman, Lynn, “Feel Free to Feel,” Artweek, October 20, vol.4; no.35. (illus.)
1972 Arts International, October. (illus.)
1968 Barnitz, Jacqueline, Mid-Monthly Review of Art Exhibitions in the New York Galleries and Museums, Artsmagazine Supplement, March. Kramer, Hilton, “Earl Kerkam: A Sensibility Unfulfilled,” The New York Times, January 27. Lightblau, Charlotte, Quality & Contrast: 3 Modem Masters, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
1967 “Philadelphia Sculptor Wins $2,500 National Prize,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 3, 1967.
1966 Canaday, John. “Graphics Are on View at Finch College,” New York Times, February 14, 1965.
1965 Getlein, Frank. “Swedish Folk Art at Smithsonian,” The Sunday Star, February 14, 1965; E-7.
1963 Grafly, Dorothy. “Experimentation Stressed in Sculpture Exhibitions,” The Sunday Bulletin, vol B, November 17, 1963.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
American University Art Museum at the Katzen Art Center (Corcoran Collection), Washington, D.C.
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA
Greenwood Plaza, Greenwood Village, CO
California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
Claremont Hills Wilderness Park, Claremont, CA
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside, CA
di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, Santa Rosa, CA
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA
Oliver Ranch Foundation, Geyserville, CA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, Oakland, CA
Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY
The Flood Family Collection, San Francisco, CA
Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA
Cover: Log Piece #7 (detail), 1983
Rear Cover: Aegean Isle 645 (detail), n.d.
Copyright 2025 Paul Thiebaud Gallery. All Rights Reserved.
Images copyright 2025 Estate of Dennis Leon.
Essay copyright 2025 Chris Johnson. Essay copyright 2025 Greg Flood.
Design: Greg Flood and Matthew Miller
All images, photo: Matthew Miller
No portion of this document may be reproduced or stored without the express written permission of the copyright holder(s).
PAUL THIEBAUD GALLERY
