Leslie Pearson
Fayetteville, North Carolina Leslie Pearson is a multimedia artist who utilizes many fibre-based materials, processes and techniques to create sculptures, installations, encaustic paintings and handmade books, in which she explores themes of memory and identity. She pursues art as a studio artist, community arts advocate and educator. In 1998 she earned a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art from Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, Missouri and was heavily involved in community arts programming as the Assistant Director of the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri and co-curator of Gallery 100 and the Lorimier Gallery in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. In 2000 she earned a Master's degree in Museum Studies at Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England and completed an internship at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland, England. In 2011, she earned an MFA in Textile Design at East Carolina University's School of Art and Design in Greenville, North Carolina, USA where she taught textile classes and worked as a studio assistant in the textile department. Currently she teaches painting, design and art appreciation classes at Brunswick Community College in Bolivia, North Carolina, USA and exhibits her work nationally and internationally. “My work is an investigation into memory, identity, and the transformative value of communication. I create pieces in response to new challenges, environments and relationships. As a multimedia artist my material choices and processes vary with each new body of work. I'm drawn to things that have layers of history. Be it handwritten letters, journals, old books, rusty metal, postage stamps, buttons, teeth, animal bones, or bits of fabric; my studio is filled with objects I've collected or unearthed. I'm a scavenger for the lost or forgotten things that have interesting textures, colors, and surfaces. I like to imagine the stories that these treasures hold. I'm inspired by organic forms found within the natural world such as pods, seeds, nests, eggs, and shells - mostly for the metaphor they hold as keepers, protectors, and incubators.
Leslie Pearson Prayers for a Whole Heart, 2014 (left) handmade paper, silk, ink, freemotion stitching, painted wooden cover. Coptic binding (waxed linen thread) 9 x 23 x 25”
Experimental Apparatus, 2013 (right) gut, tissue paper, wire, book pages 21 x 23 x 25”