“Although surrounded all my life by a family of painters, my passion for working with glass has evolved from my earlier efforts in many other artistic media – painting and graphic design, fabric, and clay.

Working now primarily in hot-fused glass and stained glass, my pieces range from contemporary and expressionistic graphics to landscape design. Glass work allows me the flexibility to create the crisp, bold, expressive splashes of color of my contemporary pieces and the muted, naturalistic hues of my organic landscape forms. In all instances I strive to develop works that are both representational and strongly emotive. Each fused-glass piece is an evolving process from a simple thought or sketch to the layering of textured glass and color to create an imagined finished piece. Then only after high temperature kiln firing the individual glass layers fuse together to a complete final image. The frequent unpredictability of the final heating variable often tempers or enhances the original design intent of an imagined piece, and the results regularly surprise and gratify me.”

Leslie Friedman’s passion for abstract expressionistic glasswork is rooted in over 35 years of design and graphic experimentation in a wide variety of arts media. A graduate of Texas Tech University with a Bachelors in Design, Leslie has spent a lifetime honing her artistic talents in painting, graphic design, interior design, mixed media, and a full-range of clay and pottery work, including free-form Raku figures, before turning her attention fulltime to glasswork.

The resulting stained-glass and fused-glass works she now creates at her home studio in Dallas, TX, represents a distillation and refinement of her many years’ experience in divergent art forms. Leslie’s recent work evokes a lifelong ambition to create artwork that synthesizes immediacy and substance with evocativeness and meaning, while retaining a lively and playful insouciance and an overarching feeling of “fun” in her pieces.

AWARDS

Niche Awards Finalist 2011: Philadelphia, PA

Mayor’s Choice Award 2012: Art on the Greene, Arlington, TX

Best of Show in Glass 2012: Dallas Indie Festival, Dallas, TX

Best of Show in Glass 2012: The Woodlands Art Festival, Woodland, TX

Best of Show in Glass 2013: Art and Air Festival, Webster Groves, MO

2006 – Present, Represented by Cerulean Gallery