Leslie Fry
Over the course of 47 years, my art has ranged from intimate drawings to public sculptures to street performances. I start with such basic human needs as food, shelter, clothing and touch – articulating connections between the natural world and the constructed world. My sculptures respond to architecture, history and the figure. The figures are most often female or hermaphrodite, of imaginary descent, and melded with architecture to portray strength and shelter. I aim to create visions of transformation and metamorphosis from our collective unconscious.
Inspirations span the body/spirit immersion in Gothic cathedrals, puppetry, mountains, Elizabethan poetry, and Jungian approaches to the wholeness of self in the world. I’ve created sculptural “ruins” that merge themes of creation and destruction, past and present, fragments and wholeness, microcosm and macrocosm. My large bronze, Colossal AcornHead, commissioned by Tufts University, longs to be a real acorn – released from its surreal state of artistic abstraction and to return to nature. The sculpture points to human consciousness rooted in nature – that our “heads” and the earth are inseparable and symbiotic. The sculpture series, “Supports,” combines architecture with human forms to explore life’s precariousness. These stacked forms evoke balance, anxiety, coherence and fragmentation.
Currently, I work with sculpture, photography and collage. For example, placing cut-out paper images in different natural environments, I photograph these theatrical interventions, a performative and ephemeral process that documents direct experience with no digital alterations. The final images are printed on aluminum or stay in situ for later discovery.
In 2019, I began painting ink-wash on old tablecloths, handkerchiefs and napkins – domestic objects from spaces traditionally dominated by women. In these fabric works, as well as in my sculpture, I am aware that my hands creating the forms imbue my work with a human sense of touch. When sculpting, I favor modeling with clay, wax, or plaster, then casting with materials as various as concrete, resin, paper, bronze, and rubber.
Hands, a long-time focus of my art, stand in for the self in my new series of bronzes. Meaning changes as my sculpted hands gesture release, acceptance and other associated states of being.
I’ve nurtured a semi-public sculpture garden over 30 years, adjacent to my studio in Winooski, Vermont. I believe sculpture can uniquely provide full-sensory experiences, especially when accessible in outdoor spaces rather than in indoor, no-touch museums or galleries. Visible from the street, the garden has become well-known, and I give personal tours to those who are interested. Winooski is a refugee resettlement community with more than 36 languages spoken, the most diverse and densely populated community in Vermont. The sculpture garden is a rare public art resource in the one-square mile Onion City. Winooski means “land of the onion” in Abenaki.
Continuing to integrate sculpture and landscaping, I’m determined to realize my ideal sculpture environment – one that is accessible to people from all walks of life and sensitively scaled for human interaction. I envision sculptures strong enough to hold people or to be held, and to be experienced with all five senses in a garden full of colors, scents, birds, and planted edibles for both animals and people. As historic statues topple, perhaps no better time exists to examine artistry, values, and feminism in public statuary. The garden brings hope and metaphor to daily life.
My sculptures and works on paper have been exhibited internationally in museums and galleries such as Kunsthaus in Hamburg, Zwitscher Machine Gallery in Berlin, Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul, Windspiel Galerie in Vienna, Couvent des Cordeliers in Paris, deCordova Sculpture Park near Boston, Centre des Arts Visuels in Montreal, and Garvey Simon, Artists Space, and Wave Hill in New York.
Public sculptures have been commissioned in New York, South Korea, Montreal, Florida, Wisconsin, and Vermont. Public collections include Tufts University, Songchu International Sculpture Park, Freehand New York, Kohler Arts Center, Tampa Museum of Art, Fleming Museum of Art, Musée d’art de Joliette, and St. Petersburg, Florida’s Museum of Fine Arts.
Born in Montreal, I grew up in Vermont, and live in Winooski. My M.F.A. is from Bard College, my B.A. is from the University of Vermont, with a Foundation year at the Central School of Art in London.
“Given the current political climate, in which basic human rights are under attack and human dignity is assailed on a daily basis, Leslie’s formal inventiveness and potent imagery move us to question our relationship to each other, our relationship to the natural world and our beliefs regarding gender roles and identity. Her work serves as a bulwark against the current political tide of fear and oppression we currently find ourselves in and offer a glimmer of hope for what could lie ahead.”
Jeff Feld, Director of 325 Project Space
Exhibition essay for the solo exhibition Polymorphic Polka
“The blending of human, natural, and architectural motifs is a hallmark of Surrealism. Fry steps into this arena with a sword of feminist thinking and cuts through the dogma. Her work shows how Surrealism can reorient our thinking about nature.”
“Stone sprites, nymphs and sphinxes populate the otherworldly garden that sculptor Leslie Fry created, drawing on fairy tales, mythology and ruins for her pieces.”
“These dream-like, even fanciful, forms are quirky, individual, and surprisingly moving. Whether human beings clear a path through nature or merge with it, the artifacts of Fry’s buildings seem to be part of an irrepressible natural order. Demolition becomes construction.”
Anne Barclay Morgan
Sculpture Magazine
“These fantastical sylvan hybrids – the seed of an oak, the seat of the mind – point to the inextricable ties between human consciousness and the natural world.”
Julie K. Hanus
“More than Human”
American Craft Magazine
“Leslie Fry creates delicate, highly charged objects that explore the boundaries between interior and exterior, male and female, clothing and skin. Like a poet who recombines familiar words to describe experience in completely new ways, Fry uses familiar clothing forms, fabrics, and references to the body to create previously unimagined hybrids . . . Her works are at once challenging and funny, vulnerable and defiant.”
Janie Cohen, Director
From the exhibition catalog for Disembodied
Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
“It’s springtime, and Leslie Fry’s garden is abloom – with human-like sculptures that, artistically speaking, have one foot in the botanical world and another in ancient architecture. Or medieval culture, or the animal kingdom. It’s an eclectic mix, part fantasy and part metaphor. Fry’s works create a sort of mythical surrealism, where human-looking skin, bone and sinew meld with leaves, roots, tree limbs and animal features. The combined effect bridges the gap between the human and natural worlds, between physical and psychological landscapes.”
Ken Picard
“Body Works”
Seven Days, Burlington, Vermont