Leslie Samson-Tabakin
About
Leslie Samson-Tabakin is an artist and educator living in Seattle, WA. She is interested in understanding how fragments of identity and personal narrative piece together the complex layers of the human condition. She aims to create spaces for people to contemplate their own narrative and experiences; opening up access points for larger conversations. Her goal is to connect with others by inviting curiosity, play, and empathy through the use of drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculptural installation.
Born and raised in Hilo, Hawaii, Leslie received her MFA in Art from San Francisco State University in 2018, and a BA in Art from Smith College in 2007. She also studied at San Francisco Art Institute and the University of Hawaii-Hilo. She has been an artist in residence at Dear Artists With Anxiety, Facebook, and Kala Art Institute. Leslie has taught at San Francisco State University, Kala Art Institute, California College of the Arts, Facebook’s Analog Research Lab, Hawaii Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. She is passionate about collaboration, community, and connection.
Maintenance Acts
I started making the Hierarchy of Needs in my first semester of grad school in 2015. I had just moved to San Francisco weeks before school started and was scrambling to find a place to live. In school, I was having trouble coming up with what I thought MFA work should be: serious, important, intellectual– I was reaching outward.
I remember confiding to my advisor that I was having trouble concentrating because I was still trying to get situated with “real life” things like living in a friend of a friend’s home, buying sheets, learning a bus route, setting up student loans, getting a new therapist, etc. It felt very at odds with trying to make "important" art in a bare studio. My advisor asked me why couldn’t I be making art about what was really going on in my life?
From then on I began to see my naivete in thinking that art and real life should be separate. This acceptance of the mundane as not only part of, but a foundational platform that feeds my creative practice, helped me to understand that the internal conflict, confusion and anxiety I was feeling was a disconnect between the needs of my mind and body.
*Images and words taken directly from the artist’s website with permission.
