Leslie Iwai

Drawing on a broad range of mediums ranging from fabric and eggshells to steel and resin, I find myself engaged in learning new processes and refining familiar ones as I work out my initial vision. Initiated by the principle of “form follows function,” there are two important questions I ask when I am making something: "How is it?" and "What is it?", usually in that order. Through these questions, I am inevitably led to new and, sometimes unlikely, connections and uncovered narratives. One of my favorite seminars in graduate school was Craft and Scholarship (M. Arch, Virginia Tech) where I happened upon the underlying threads between the woven, the engine, and the feminine. Between the hardness and softness of these three, my work rests.