Clay and Canvas: A 50-year Retrospective by Leslie Green
Exhibition Dates: May 25 – July 7, 2018
Viz City was privileged to interview artist Leslie Green on Sunday, April 22, 2018 for a broadcast date of Wed. May 30, 2018. Leslie has a show called Clay and Canvas: A 50-year Retrospective in The Moreland Auditorium of the Benton County Historical Society in Philomath. Leslie says her whole life in art was shaped by one very important person.
"So there’s a range of work—there’s thrown pottery, which is what I started doing when I was sixteen, and I had a wonderful teacher at the time who got me into being an artist. Her name was Esther James and she was an incredible role model for me when I was sixteen years old."
Leslie met her mentor Esther James at a music and art school in Southern California where Esther was the ceramics teacher.
"At that age, I was fascinated by her and her way of working, and I wanted to follow the path that she was leading. And she was very connected to nature and she always told me that nature is the great teacher."
Esther is 91 years old now. She’s in a nursing home in the outskirts of Seattle where Leslie visits her several times a year. She still critiques work for Leslie.
"One of the things that we do focus on are mugs. When she was teaching me how to throw, she was a master of nuance in thrown pottery. And throughout the years, I will throw mugs and—I’m never the kind of potter that just cranks things out. Every mug everything that I throw, I don’t throw a lot any more, but when I do, each one is a separate little sculpture, and so I will bring a mug to Esther and we’ll talk about it, and she’ll say,“This is lovely,” or“I’d love to see a little more curve at the lip,” or“Or the foot could be sculpted a little differently.”
This lifelong creative relationship has very much informed Leslie’s Clay and Canvas fifty year retrospective. Leslie’s show runs through July 7. The Moreland Auditorium of the Benton County Historical Society is located at 1101 Main Street, Philomath, Oregon and it is open Tuesday - Saturday, 10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Admission is free.
Viz City is co-produced by Terry Way and Sandy Brown Jensen.
