About Leo Monahan
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In addition to exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, Leo has been artist-in-residence at the Children’s Museum in Chicago. He aims for a child-like quality in his work, he says, " I’m looking for very simple communication, I want somebody to look at my work and say, ’Yeah, I feel like that or I’ve seen that or that reminds me of something. . .I have a memory of that.’ I try to give you my child’s view of things." Leo describes his own childhood as a "Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn" kind of childhood, growing up in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Many of Leo’s art pieces reflect his childhood relationship to the Indian culture, depicting feathers and shields.
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Leo compares his technique to the Indian approach to carving a canoe from a tree trunk: Rather than cutting away everything that isn’t the canoe, Leo adds everything that belongs to the picture. Of course a very important part of Leo’s work is the light and shadow play that is created with a 3-dimensional surface, as light moves across a paper sculpture it seems to move, as though it were alive.
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