We met Leigh years back when she and husband Shad were living in Austin. They did a stint in Dallas for years then made their way to their current home in Bisbee, Arizona where they live in a beautiful victorian complex of homes which once served as the workplace and homes of the ladies of the night.
Leigh has done art since I’ve known her and I know it goes back even further in her life. Her art seems to be her language.
I have seen her art evolve over our friendship and a number of years ago when she got in to natural dying and earth pigments I saw it resonating through her.
As she took the drives from Dallas and Bisbee during the move, she studied the landscapes and was inspired to use fabrics dyed with natural dyes to create the textures and scenes of the deserts.
We have long been lovers of quilts and I kept looking at Leigh’s new voice of her work and it spoke to me as a quilt with it’s piecing and stories, creating a place in time.
Leigh has a minimalist landscape style combined with layers of the process.
When I asked Leigh about her work she explains it as “Experiencing the sun on the landscape at different times of day brought me to the natural palette of dyes and earth pigments and the reductive streamlining of the land, flora and fauna into graphic shapes and form.”

I recently sent Leigh a few questions:

What if any music did you listen to in your studio while working on this latest series?

Oh I had many artists on repeat. Hermanos Gutierrez, Sierra Ferrell, La Lom, Tommy Guerrero and Tiwayyen. As well as all the classics, Willie, Waylan, Tupac and Biggie.

You are such a great cook, what would be the perfect meal served with this series?

I thought about this question a lot. Here we go from cocktails to dessert.

Cocktail: Margarita or Neat Spirit: Sotol or both

Crispy squash blossom with goat cheese and local honey

Spiced open fire grilled chicken with prickly pear sauce. Served with heritage corn tortillas and pickled nopales.

Blue corn cake for dessert.

How did you get into natural pigment dying?  

Year 2020 I was one of those people who had to stay home. I was looking for things to create, with what I had and I found a cotton sheet and a purple cabbage.  The more I researched on line, the more interested I became in finding dyes in unexpected places such as avocados and the sawdust from an osage tree, grown in Texas.

The idea fell upon me to create landscapes with colors from the land. With as many natural elements as I could use. Many of the dyes for textile are not grown in the US, such as indigo so foraging is not always an option to achieve the colors I have in mind.

I'm still learning and experimenting keeping my mind occupied and my hands working toward new colors and forms.

*artwork available online Monday March 16th at 4pm