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Leonardo Drew
born Tallahassee, FL 1961
Lives/WorksNew York, New York, United States
BornTallahassee, Florida, United States
BiographyLeonardo Drew was born in Tallahassee and grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Drew attended Parsons School of Design and earned a BFA from Cooper Union. His large-scale sculptures are composed of repeating layers of materials such as wood, metal, and paper that have undergone processes of weathering and decay. Their dynamic presence evokes memory through materials common to the human experience. Drew was the subject of a 2017 solo exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco and in 2019 opened Leonardo Drew: City in the Grass, a major public project in Madison Square Park in New York City. “I grew up in the P.T. Barnum projects of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The city dump occupied every view of our apartment. I would watch the bulldozers troll back and forth over this massive landfill, . . ., the cranes lift, deposit, and bury. . . . It’s the metaphor and consistent weight of being which drives my work to this day. Though I do not use found objects . . . (my materials are fabricated in the studio), what has remained from my early explorations are the echoes of evolution . . . birth, life, death, regeneration.”
Person TypeIndividual
born Tupelo, MS 1933; died Washington, D.C. 2022