Art and Art History Program

Leah Hardy

Professor: Metalsmithing, Foundations

Email: lhardy@uwyo.edu • Website: www.leahmhardy.com
Office: VA 228

B.F.A., University of Kansas, 1987.
M.F.A., University of Indiana, Bloomington, 1990.

About

Leah Hardy has taught at UW since 2001 and established the Metalsmithing Program in 2009.

Hardy’s intimately scaled mixed media sculptural works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, acknowledged with numerous awards and featured in books and articles. A passion for travel and researching metalsmithing techniques in other cultures has resulted in many international residencies and co-teaching a UW Art course every other summer in India 2005-2015. After an artist residency at Gray Street Workshop in Adelaide, South Australia in 2012, Hardy has returned several times to exhibit and travel down under. In 2017 she was a Visiting Artist at the School of Art, Architecture and Design at the University of South Australia for three months and coordinated an art project that involved six artists (US, Australia, New Zealand) who embarked on a camel trek in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. Art manifesting from the experience was highlighted in the traveling exhibition, In Camels’ Footsteps, in Adelaide and Sydney during July-September 2018.

Artist Statement

Much of Hardy’s conceptual and aesthetic impetus for her artwork has been derived from interest in ritual objects, shrines and talismans—the intersection of the sacred and the secular. Personal iconography often includes parts of the body and flora presented in a contemplative manner. Her newest work has been focused on insect-inspired forms, which become metaphors for the present human condition and also serve as an ethical inquiry into the scientific ability to genetically modify our food, alter our bodies and prolong life. Fragmented, altered with mechanical elements or re-contextualized, these life forms are narratively presented to reference our fascination with mortality and desire with the underlying yearning to connect and communicate. The intended effect is for the pieces to be specimens—beautiful, yet at times, disturbing.