Leslie W. Friedman

          Leslie Friedman's passion for abstract expressionistic glasswork is rooted in over 35 years' of design and graphics experimentation in a wide variety of arts media.  A graduate of Texas Tech University with a Bachelor's in Design, Leslie has spent a lifetime honing her artistic talents in painting, graphic design, interior design, mixed media, and a full-range of clay and pottery work, including especially free-form Raku figures, before turning her attention fulltime to glasswork. 

The resulting hot-fuse glass and stained-glass works she now creates at her home studio in Arlington, Texas represent a distillation and refinement of her many years' experience in divergent art forms.  Leslie's recent work evokes a  lifelong ambition to create artwork that synthesizes immediacy and substance with evocativeness and meaning, while retaining a lively and playful insouciance and an overarching feeling of "fun" in her pieces.

Artist Statement

Although surrounded all my life by a family of painters, my passion for working with glass has evolved from my earlier efforts in many other artistic media – painting and graphic design, fabric, and clay. 

Working now primarily in hot-fused glass and stained glass, my pieces range from contemporary and expressionistic graphics to landscape design.  Glass work allows me the flexibility to create the crisp, bold, expressive splashes of color of my contemporary pieces and the muted, naturalistic hues of my landscape forms.  In all instances I strive to develop works that are both representational and strongly emotive.

Each fused-glass piece is an evolving process from a simple thought or sketch to the layering of textured glass and color to create an imagined finished piece.  Then only after high-temperature kiln-firing melts and fuses the individual glass layers does a complete final image appear.  The frequent unpredictability of the final heating variable often tempers or enhances the original design intent of an imagined piece, and the results regularly surprise and gratify me.

Exhibitions

2002, Mission Viejo Fall Festival, Mission Viejo, CA (juried show)

2003, Pacific Fine Arts Festival, Palm Springs, CA (juried show)

2003, Village Venture Arts Faire, Claremont, CA (juried show)

2003, Mission Viejo Fall Festival, Mission Viejo, CA (juried show)

Gallery Representation

Cerulean Gallery, Dallas, TX

Upstairs Gallery, Arlington, TX

Brownstone Village, Arlington, TX

J-Space Gallery, Marble Falls, TX

Present Tense Gallery, San Clemente, CA

Art for the Soul, Laguna Beach, CA

Trios Gallery, Solana Beach, CA

Long Beach Art Museum, Long Beach, CA

Home Arts, Cambria, CA

Two Plates Full Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ