Leslie Erganian
Encyclopedia
Leslie Erganian, is an American
art
ist, television correspondent, and arts education advocate. Her multi-disciplinary work is influenced by the Surrealists and often incorporates found objects and photographic images into collage
and assemblage
constructions and installations. The elements of waking dreams comprise the major themes of her work which include menace and loss, nature and myth, identity and discovery revealed in multiple layers.
Leslie Jeanne Erganian is an American
artist
and writer
. Her body of work includes photography
, collage
, assemblage
, and animation
.
, attended William Fremd High School
and became a pre-med biology student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She moved to California during her second year, and studied photography under Joe Deal
and art history under Dr. Richard Carrott to receive a BA with a dual major in fine art and art history. She returned to Illinois to obtain a MFA
in photography under Jerry Savage and Barbara Degenevieve
, and thereafter found representation by the Phyllis Needleman Gallery in Chicago
where she exhibited a series of hand painted photographic self-portraits exploring female fairy tale mythology.
She returned to California on a Graduate Fellowship to obtain a second MFA from the UCLA Film School and representation by the Marilyn Pink Gallery in Los Angeles. In 1994, Leslie first appeared on film Radio Inside
starring Elisabeth Shue
, a film that she also art directed. Additional project contributions were for clients including Warner Bros.
, MGM, Dreamworks
, NBC
, MTV
and PBS
. They include Babylon 5
, Speechless
, and Looney Tunes
for Warner Bros. Animation
.
In 1998, she began appearing regularly on television as a creative consiglieri. Her first guest appearance on Discovery Channel
’s The Christopher Lowell
Show led to regular contributions to his show. In 2000, she appeared on NBC’s The Rosie O’Donnell Show, and in 2002 she became a regular correspondent for the Hallmark Channel
weekday morning show "New Morning" appearing in thirty-one episodes over five seasons in a series entitled "Soul of a House".
She established her own label Lost Continents in 1996, creating functional art, interiors, and props for clients in the entertainment industry as well as for stores throughout Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 2008, she established the website Leslieness as a platform for increasing art access and visual awareness through writings & photography about art, life, and beauty.
She has taught classes in film design at UCLA, and photography at the University of Illinois earning two awards for outstanding teaching. She has led her voice to advancing verbal and visual literacy as a performer through SAG Foundation
in Los Angeles, and for the Deaf Media Arts Council in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education. She has become increasingly engaged with museum education through a series of ongoing programs with the Metropolitan Museum of Art
believing that the role American Museums play in the advancement of art education to learners of all ages is a vital national resource for the 21st century.
Leslie is a lifetime member of The Society of Architectural Historians
alongside her fiancé, architect and author Wolfgang Wagener, AIA, RIBA. She contributed a chapter to his architectural monograph Raphael Soriano
published by Phaidon Press
. In 2008, she was a participating artist in "Department Store: A Collaboration with J. Morgan Puett
" the inaugural exhibit of the Sullivan Center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
ist, television correspondent, and arts education advocate. Her multi-disciplinary work is influenced by the Surrealists and often incorporates found objects and photographic images into collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
and assemblage
Assemblage (art)
Assemblage is an artistic process. In the visual arts, it consists of making three-dimensional or two-dimensional artistic compositions by putting together found objects...
constructions and installations. The elements of waking dreams comprise the major themes of her work which include menace and loss, nature and myth, identity and discovery revealed in multiple layers.
Leslie Jeanne Erganian is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
. Her body of work includes photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
, assemblage
Assemblage
An assemblage is an archaeological term meaning a group of different artifacts found in association with one another, that is, in the same context...
, and animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
.
Life
Leslie Erganian was born in Oak Park, IllinoisOak Park, Illinois
Oak Park, Illinois is a suburb bordering the west side of the city of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is the twenty-fifth largest municipality in Illinois. Oak Park has easy access to downtown Chicago due to public transportation such as the Chicago 'L' Blue and Green lines,...
, attended William Fremd High School
William Fremd High School
William Fremd High School, or Fremd, is a public four-year high school located in Palatine, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. It is part of Township High School District 211, which also includes James B...
and became a pre-med biology student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She moved to California during her second year, and studied photography under Joe Deal
Joe Deal
Joseph Maurice "Joe" Deal was an American photographer who specialized in depicting how the landscape was transformed by people....
and art history under Dr. Richard Carrott to receive a BA with a dual major in fine art and art history. She returned to Illinois to obtain a MFA
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
in photography under Jerry Savage and Barbara Degenevieve
Barbara Degenevieve
Barbara DeGenevieve is an interdisciplinary artist currently living in Chicago, who works in photography, video, and performance. She lectures widely on her work as well as subjects including human sexuality, gender, transsexuality, censorship, ethics, and pornography...
, and thereafter found representation by the Phyllis Needleman Gallery in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
where she exhibited a series of hand painted photographic self-portraits exploring female fairy tale mythology.
She returned to California on a Graduate Fellowship to obtain a second MFA from the UCLA Film School and representation by the Marilyn Pink Gallery in Los Angeles. In 1994, Leslie first appeared on film Radio Inside
Radio Inside
Radio Inside is a 1994 American drama film, written and directed by Jeffrey Jackson Bell.-Plot:Having graduated from college, Matthew Anderson travels to Florida to spend some time with his older brother while deciding what career to pursue...
starring Elisabeth Shue
Elisabeth Shue
Elisabeth Judson Shue is an American actress and producer, most famous for her roles in the films The Karate Kid, Adventures in Babysitting, Cocktail, Back to the Future Parts II and III and Leaving Las Vegas, for which she won five acting awards and was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden...
, a film that she also art directed. Additional project contributions were for clients including Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
, MGM, Dreamworks
DreamWorks
DreamWorks Pictures, also known as DreamWorks, LLC, DreamWorks SKG, DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC, DreamWorks Studios or DW Studios, LLC, is an American film studio which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games and television programming...
, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
and PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
. They include Babylon 5
Babylon 5
Babylon 5 is an American science fiction television series created, produced and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. The show centers on a space station named Babylon 5: a focal point for politics, diplomacy, and conflict during the years 2257–2262...
, Speechless
Speechless
Speechless is the ninth studio album from Christian singer Steven Curtis Chapman. It was released on June 15, 1999, by Sparrow Records.It has been certified Platinum as of November 27, 2000, by the RIAA...
, and Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
for Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation is the animation division of Warner Bros., a subsidiary of Time Warner. The studio is closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters, among others. The studio is the successor to Warner Bros...
.
In 1998, she began appearing regularly on television as a creative consiglieri. Her first guest appearance on Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
’s The Christopher Lowell
Christopher Lowell
Christopher Lowell is an interior decorator and television personality. He is best known for hosting the television shows Interior Motives and It's Christopher Lowell!...
Show led to regular contributions to his show. In 2000, she appeared on NBC’s The Rosie O’Donnell Show, and in 2002 she became a regular correspondent for the Hallmark Channel
Hallmark Channel
The Hallmark Channel is a cable television network that broadcasts across the United States. Their programming includes a mix of television movies/miniseries, syndicated series, and lifestyle shows that are appropriate for the whole family...
weekday morning show "New Morning" appearing in thirty-one episodes over five seasons in a series entitled "Soul of a House".
She established her own label Lost Continents in 1996, creating functional art, interiors, and props for clients in the entertainment industry as well as for stores throughout Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 2008, she established the website Leslieness as a platform for increasing art access and visual awareness through writings & photography about art, life, and beauty.
She has taught classes in film design at UCLA, and photography at the University of Illinois earning two awards for outstanding teaching. She has led her voice to advancing verbal and visual literacy as a performer through SAG Foundation
SAG Foundation
The Screen Actors Guild Foundation is a non-profit humanitarian and educational organization founded in 1985. Although it is independent of the Screen Actors Guild and financed through private and corporate donations, it does offer some services to SAG members.The Screen Actors Guild Foundation...
in Los Angeles, and for the Deaf Media Arts Council in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Education. She has become increasingly engaged with museum education through a series of ongoing programs with the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
believing that the role American Museums play in the advancement of art education to learners of all ages is a vital national resource for the 21st century.
Leslie is a lifetime member of The Society of Architectural Historians
Society of Architectural Historians
The Society of Architectural Historians is an international not-for-profit organization that promotes the study and preservation of the built environment worldwide....
alongside her fiancé, architect and author Wolfgang Wagener, AIA, RIBA. She contributed a chapter to his architectural monograph Raphael Soriano
Raphael Soriano
Raphael S. Soriano, FAIA, was an influential architect and educator who helped define a period of 20th century architecture that came to be known as Mid-century modern...
published by Phaidon Press
Phaidon Press
Phaidon Press is a British publisher of books on the visual arts, including art, architecture, photography, and design worldwide.As of 2009, Phaidon's headquarters are in London, UK, though they were in Oxford for many years, with offices in New York City, Paris, Berlin, Milan, and Tokyo...
. In 2008, she was a participating artist in "Department Store: A Collaboration with J. Morgan Puett
J. Morgan Puett
J. Morgan Puett is a conceptual installation artist. She is the daughter of a third generation beekeeper and a painter. Her work focuses on clothing design/textile and costume history as well as the recreation of milieus that recollect her well-worn southern rural heritage; the subject of her...
" the inaugural exhibit of the Sullivan Center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.