Artist update with Leigh Mackow.

Dash: Last time -30- had the pleasure of talking with you, you were working as an Artist in Residence at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. You had a BA in Graphic Design, and were planning to start work on an MA. Have you had a chance to get back to school?

LM: I will be attending the University of Connecticut in the coming fall. I am excited beyond belief at the opportunity to spend two years working on just my own work and focusing on the things that I want to do. When I come out of the program I will have my MFA in Studio Art. I plan to focus in printmaking but the great thing about the program at UCONN is that I am free to experiment with whatever media I wish.

Dash: I noticed that you're now the Assistant Director of the Lancaster Museum of Art. The museum is responsible for one of the largest collections of contemporary regional artists in PA. How did that come about?

LM: Word of mouth is a glorious thing. Isn’t it? Lancaster is a fairly small community so it’s not hard to know what is going on. Great recommendations from former professors now friends got me the job at the Museum after they found out the Museum was looking for an Assistant Director.

Dash: It sounds like the LMA is a pretty vibrant artistic community, isn't it?

LM: Yes, it actually is. Lancaster is great b/c we have so much going on. People are so surprised to find this out…they usually just assume that if you live in Lancaster that you’re Amish. Not so. The art community is pretty large and growing daily. There are so many artists here making work. It’s pretty exciting. I think in a year or two people are going to want to be here b/c of that. Lancaster is in a great location too; not too far from Philadelphia, D.C., Baltimore, Pittsburgh, etc. So there are plenty of places within driving distance to get out and see amazing art. (aside from the great art they get to experience in Lancaster County)

Dash: Has your role as the Assistant Director of the LMA influenced the way that you create art? The title Assistant Director usually connotes some pretty long hours behind a desk.

LM: My role at the Museum exposes me to all kinds of art; art by local artists and those that are internationally known. So I get to see a great deal of work and it gets all the wheels spinning. I can see different framing techniques, different media, etc. It has been a wonderful learning experience for me and I have certainly seen (although most of the time unintentionally) the influence of certain artists whose work I really enjoy manifest itself in my own work.

Having the position that I do does, however, cut down on my free time to make art. Our staff is small at the Museum and we get spread pretty thin. We perform a lot of different tasks depending on what needs to happen. There is a lot of unpaid overtime. Many people don’t realize what actually happens behind the scenes of a non-profit organization. So don’t forget those donation boxes b/c the money in there helps the programs run and keeps the lights on.

Dash: Speaking of which, putting together the book "Masks From Around the World" must have taken up a lot of your time?

LM: Several months, in fact. But it was worth it to receive that letter from the American Association of Museums informing me that the catalog had won an Honorable Mention in the exhibition catalog category for Museums with budgets under $500,000. Very cool! And it got the Museum some well-deserved recognition.

Dash: Your art is largely computer based, Photoshop, etc. Have the changes in modern technology in the last few years affected the way you create art?

LM: Actually, no. I am still using primarily Photoshop. I am currently trying to perhaps "revert" to more hands-on techniques. At one point, I felt that the work I was making was too sterile. I needed to add something to make the work more visually tactile: hence the addition of the sewing of the acetate onto the ripped cold-pressed watercolor paper. At one point I completely had to break from using the computer and get back to getting dirt under my fingernails. The pieces that I made during that time were made with water-based wax pastels, and graphite. After I had built up a nice surface I would go back into the composition with a razor blade and scratch lines, squares, circles, etc. into the pastels on the paper.

Dash: There seem to be more and more computer based artists out there, these days. There are a lot of people working with Flash and various other programs, creating complex websites and interactive computer installations.

Yes, I agree. I’ll admit though I have not had the time or the patience to learn these programs yet. It would probably do me good. I should put it on my "to do" list.

Dash: Previously you explained your art as a personal and narrative, a sort of introspective exploration into your personal beliefs. Are those topics still central to your work?

LM: I think those topics will forever influence my work in one way or another. In general, my work focuses on the body. For the last couple of years I have been dealing with the idea of "things" that are passed from one generation to the next. This includes ideas and believes that are passed from parent to child and also things like genetic material.

When I was in college my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. Months later I started to exhibit some of the same symptoms that she had had years before she was diagnosed. A couple years later she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. After all the things I watched her go through, after all the tests, the chemo, etc……well who knew what was in store for all of us (my family). So now I wonder if these are things that I am going to have to deal with in the future on a more personal level. This year I was diagnosed as being bi-polar (it took 7 years to diagnose). That’s a weird thing too and there are so many issues that come into play, especially with all the stereotypes it seems to carry along with it. In the long run I wonder, since mental illness has been identified to be genetically passed, is there a chance that I can pass that to my children, when/if I decide to have them? I’m not sure if I want to put them through that.

So I guess you can say that for now my work is still very narrative in nature. I guess I’ll have to see if it stays that way when I get to school.

Dash: The work that I've seen -- the camera stills manipulated in Photoshop, which became acetate between layers of plexiglass -- seemed very bright, vibrant colors. Are you still using similar methods, or ideas?

LM: Now I am taking the shots, cropping them very close so they almost become just shapes. I then print them out onto acetate, layer them and then machine stitch them onto torn Arches watercolor paper. When I print the image out onto acetate I will do a batch of 15-20 (all same size) at one time. Then I mix and match. This is a fun process. I never know exactly what I am going to end up with when I am composing these on the computer screen. And then once the images are layered on top of one another there is a completely new composition with new colors and new shapes. And both the colors and shapes are absolutely amazing when they go from just two single images to one complete image. It amazes me every time.

Dash: That previous series seemed to be pretty reflective, literally as well as figuratively. The images were nudes, self-portraits. There's a very deliberate and demure sensuality to those prints, do you think that sensuality an unavoidable theme for contemporary artists, such as yourself?

LM: Not necessarily, I think I just ended up focusing on the body because of the circumstances that were surrounding me in my personal life. This is the work that came out of what was going on in my life.