Lesley Bodzy Art
Mixed Media
Spring Street Studios
Studio 218
lesleybodzyart@gmail.com
Bio
I hold an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and have studied at Mount Holyoke College, Hunter College, and the Art Students League of New York. My work is represented by galleries in Saugerties, NY, Houston, TX, Williamsburg, VA, and Jersey City, NJ and it has been exhibited widely across the United States and abroad. Recent shows include ChaShaMa and Sculptors Alliance in New York City. I also recently exhibited a selection of my work at Holy Art Gallery in London, UK, Site:Brooklyn, Emerge Gallery in Saugerties, NY, the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT, the Susquehanna Art Museum in Harrisburg, PA, and the Meadows Gallery in Tyler, TX.
Artist Statement
I am a sculptor and painter working in New York City and Houston. My body of work explores the ways in which materiality can give form and visibility to psychologically complex dimensions. Trauma, loss, and desire are recurring themes I approach through material processes as I devise a personal metaphorical language. My work is biographical in essence but my aesthetic language allows viewers to find their place among the bare narrative outlines that hold each piece together. My projects often involve series through which a loose narrative can be traced. Each takes on various forms intended to position the viewer as a witness as well as a co-author, creates new and unpredictable cycles of thoughts and associations, and provides an experimental opportunity to challenge one’s assumptions and perspectives.
My practice is steeped in a genuine passion for materials and their expressive potential. I often let materials guide me through the creative process. Their malleability and resistance point me towards a subject that emerges as part of a meditative concentration—a tactile and open-ended dialogue that often results in a deeper reflection and comprehension of personal struggles. Manipulating, rearranging, and layering become gestural statements I perform to process events from the past and exorcise, through the material presence of the finished piece, their impact on the present.
The aesthetics that characterize my work are in part informed by the sculptural abstraction of the 1970s—especially the work of female pioneers like Lynda Benglis, Lynn Umlauf, and Merrill Wagner, artists that have been strong influences in my research. As a result of these influences, in my relationship with materials, I favor open form and ambiguities, privileging aesthetic solutions that gesture towards the imperfect and incomplete.
My minimalist aesthetics are often counterpointed by bold colors that dramatize each piece in order to attract the viewer’s attention to what is often concealed or barely perceptible in our lives. Much of my practice thus revolves around the notion of monumentalizing the ephemeral through the creation of an idiosyncratic aesthetic language. It is in this context that my work can be seen to have a psychoanalytical/introspective edge. Some of my works are opportunities to reconsider “hard to come to terms with” circumstances, dramatic events, or fleeting/causal moments that nonetheless end up defining our personalities, our self-esteem, and our relationships with others.
