https://www.artscouncil.nebraska.gov/cumulate/
cumulate’s visual language highlights the beauty and role of clouds in the Nebraska landscape interlacing it visually, audibly, and tangibly with the work of Nebraska poets, evoking the beauty of the Nebraska landscape and its people. Through this rich gathering of meaning, material, and content, cumulate merges the physical, the digital and the ephemeral. By creating vistas for the viewer and multiple paths for exploration, cumulate provides a place of visual rest and avenues of creative curiosity within the Calvin T. Ryan Library.
Leslie Iwai is an installation artist and sculptor from Wisconsin who grew up in Bellevue, Nebraska. Her studies in mathematics, chemistry (Wayne State College, Nebraska), and architecture (Master of Architecture, Virginia Tech) inform her passion to bring unusual connections found in her research and artistic process to the surface for others’ ruminations and inspiration. Her work is in numerous private and public collections, including Duncan Aviation, the Omaha Public Art Commission, and most recently the Nebraska 1% for Art Collection. Leslie has continued to establish her artistic practice in Wisconsin and was a featured artist in the Museum of Wisconsin Art’s Claiming Space: A New Century of Visionary Women (2021) and has continued to show her work in solo and group exhibitions. In tandem with her studio practice, Leslie has presented and taught in both academic and community settings in Nebraska, Wisconsin, Georgia, Missouri, Illinois, and New Mexico. She has been a contributing writer and artist for Image Journal, SEEN (CIVA) and The Well (InterVarsity). She enjoys living in and exploring Wisconsin with her husband where she creates art, collaborates, and connects with her community. When not in her studio, Leslie can often be found hunting for treasures at thrift stores or walking on trails near her home in Middleton, Wisconsin.
