Leah Patgorski

Biography

Leah Patgorski was born in 1978 in coastal Virginia. She received her bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Virginia in 2000. In the years that followed, she worked for a landscape architect and then for a drapery workroom until moving to Chicago in 2004 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She earned a master of fine arts degree there in 2006.

Ms. Patgorski has been working sculpturally for the past 8 years. Along with this work, she has been involved in multiple creative fields, including architecture, interior design, graphic design, and art education. She has been commissioned to make projects for other artists and for arts institutions. She recently moved her headquarters to Pittsburgh, PA.

Artist's Statement

The work shown here is primarily made up of enclosures and partitions. While I welcome the associations that come from implied functionality, my focus is on aligning shapes, textures, and structure to create a single overall form. Lighting conditions and placement are also important to me, particularly as these affect the ability of viewers and potential inhabitants to see each other.

I use textiles in most of my projects. I originally began to experiment with fabric when I was an architecture student, employing its pliability as a component of a larger design. This prompted me to learn how to sew, and I became increasingly aware of the essential nature of woven and sewn materials in daily life. It was a natural extension, then, to keep constructing with textiles, leveraging their flexible and familiar attributes to explore the scale in between clothing and rooms. At this size, a form can significantly affect one’s sensory experience, while remaining nomadic and ephemeral. Working on these projects continues to yield new perspectives for me on solitude, intimacy, and individuality.