+About the Artist
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James Leonard is a Brooklyn-based artist. His work ranges from figure drawings and handheld objects to videos, installations, and socially engaged performance pieces.
Leonard’s art often examines complex intersections: where agency butts up against impotence, where alarm gives birth to growth, and where optimism coexists with grieving. He hopes that his works can serve as a form of wayfinding, helping others find beauty and joy while navigating the challenges of our twenty-first century existence.
Exhibitions and appearances include Queens Museum, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Wasserman Projects in Detroit, the Delaware Art Museum, and MASS MoCA. His work has been supported by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, the Jersey City Parks Coalition, and the Joseph Robert Foundation. Leonard received his bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University and has an MFA from the University of Michigan. He has presented as visiting artist at institutions including Cornell, Harvard, and American University.
Altarpieces
1995
Mixed media
Part of a trio of altarpieces from early in the artist’s career, these works incorporate glass plate holograms produced while in residency at The Holography Institute. The Altarpiece to Childhood Perceptions of Violence blends an early miniature television screen, found objects, and weathered, reclaimed wood. The Altarpiece to Interactivity utilizes text on mahogany blocks to evoke truisms around the concepts of myth, science, and reality. And The Altarpiece to Lateral Social Mobility (currently not pictured) uses appropriated handwritten text, a journal mounted on metal, and slide projections to give context to a unique first-of-its-kind glass plate hologram.
