LESLIE SWEDER
CAAF Residency st[art]@4Five, July – September 2010
BIOGRAPHY
Leslie Sweder has spent seven years or so formally meandering through studies in sculpture, philosophy and comparative religions both at ACAD and the University of Calgary. She has shown sporadically over the years, usually in fringe galleries – or on very rare occasion at an artist run centre. As of late, her inquiries have led her to urban plein air studies as the artist in residence at Museo Poco (Calgary, Alberta) as well as partaking in collaborative drawings as part of a trio collectively known as “drunken paw” (http://www.artreview.com/profile/drunkenpaw).
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
I have always been most curious about that which we cannot see, those intangible energies that we only feel or sense yet which somehow manage to overwhelm us with information. I view life, pared down to its essence, as pure energy, a kinetic tapestry of information that we humans are but single elements of. It is the challenge of all living things to change what is around them and to be changed by it, both to move life’s energy through them and to move with the energy that surrounds them. I believe that in experiencing either of these states we have experienced magic in its purest sense.
“I Saw Nothing Coming Down the Road” emerged from a series of drawings or notes exploring the diverse yet constant movement of energies on a busy urban street. This residency finds me zeroing in on these movements through studies of individual eruptions of energy. The “notes” from the street are now becoming full blown essays exploring mysterious and grandiose themes such as perception, continuity, cosmogony, chaos, metamorphosis and mythology.