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Leah Oates

Interview with Leah Oates 

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Can you share what initially drew you to explore the concept of “transitory spaces”? How did this theme emerge in your artistic practice?

Everyone lives in a world of change and transition and the landscape is also always changing constantly. My work aims to reflect this flux and change in the photographic image and within human perception and experience. Transitory Space conveys the visual and thematic aims of my work.

Your work often involves multiple exposures to capture the complexities of time and space. What does this technique mean to you in expressing the fleeting nature of these environments?

When I look back on a moment it’s full of impressions and multiple exposures capture this. I make multiple exposures on specific frames in camera which allows me to display a more complete correlation of experiences that a single exposure just misses. Every moment captured on film is over as soon as the shutter clicks, recording the ephemeral. Yet, in reality, there is always a visual cacophony of experience. We are always living in many realities at once. Multiple exposures express the way we experience the world more accurately.

In “Transitory Space,” you speak about the coexistence of contradictory realities. How do you navigate these contradictions through your photographic process?

A camera can capture an essence of a moment in life but any art media has limits compared to actual life yet art is also a record of life. Time is layered and not frozen into one single moment. Photography is directly connected to time as the camera shoots in fractions of a second. Time is always slipping and fracturing from the present, past and future. We are often living in all these levels at once. But when we’re not, we experience flow—or an absence of time. Multiple exposures are close to the experience of “flow.” When I look at a moment in time I “feel” more than can be recorded with a simple click of the shutter. I use multiple exposures on film to record a more accurate picture of how we can recall time transpiring. I sometimes think of my work like x-rays or ghost images of the land under the surface that is unsettled, under threat yet is also so very beautiful, magical and enigmatic and that the colored panels are to show these transitions of feelings, perceptions and of time passing and in the landscape itself moment by moment.

The idea of capturing “visual cacophony” seems central to your work. How do you decide what elements to layer in a single frame?

I edit and play with my negative scans and I know visually when the work is done. There are series of works that are edited and created fast and other times its slower or I pass on working in certain negatives. I’ve been doing this for over thirty years and it’s a visual intuitive process when editing and playing with my negatives. Urban and natural environments are both present in your series. How do you approach these different settings when capturing images, and what do they symbolize in your work?

I’ve lived in urban areas for most of my life and I seek nature in these city environments as I love both. I don’t see them as being that different really and I approach both urban and natural environments the same which is to try to see them fully in all their beauty, changes and chaos and to attempt to capture the feeling, essence and energy of the place in a photograph.

Your images evoke a sense of both beauty and fragility. How do you balance these qualities in your compositions?

To me both beauty and fragility are strength and love and are in harmony with each other. It takes strength to show fragility and for beauty to keep existing as it’s under constant assault on many fronts from climate change and disaster, war and politics, ignorance and unkindness. Beauty keeps us alive and it’s life sustenance itself and sometimes it’s seen as insubstantial yet it’s the opposite as we can’t live without beauty. I once gave a presentation on being an artist to my son’s class where one of the students asked me why art is important. This began a discussion of what if all the arts just disappeared for a day and everything was just blank and grey. Without beauty and all the arts what a bleak and harsh world we would occupy.

How has your understanding of time and impermanence evolved throughout the “Transitory Space” series?

As I age, I see time as fleeting and impermanence as part of everyday life. I hope to live to a very old age and I aim to capture and understand via photography the landscape I inhabit in all its beauty, chaos, flux, fragility, randomness and its magic and light.

Interviewed by Anna Gvozdeva of Visual Arts Magazine, 2024 

New Works 2025

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

 

The Transitory Space series deals with urban and natural locations that are transforming due to the passage of time, altered natural conditions and a continual human imprint. In everyone and in everything there are daily changes and this series articulates fluctuation in the photographic image and captures movement through time and space. Transitory spaces have a messy human energy that is perpetually in the present yet continually altering. They are endlessly interesting, alive places where there is a great deal of beauty and fragility. They are temporary monuments to the ephemeral nature of existence.

 

Humans leave traces and artifacts of our consciousness everywhere in our environment.  Contradictory realities can be found co-existing wherever we look.  They’re in what we choose to think; what we choose to believe; and, how we choose to act.  And, they can be found in what we choose to observe. When I look back on a moment it’s full of impressions and multiple exposures capture this. I make multiple exposures on specific frames in camera which allows me to display a more complete correlation of experiences that a single exposure just misses.  Every moment captured on film is over as soon as the shutter clicks, recording the ephemeral.  Yet, in reality, there is always a visual cacophony of experience.   We are always living in many realities at once.  Multiple exposures express the way we experience the world more accurately.  Time is layered and not frozen into one single moment.  Photography is directly connected to time as the camera shoots in fractions of a second.  Time is always slipping and fracturing from the present, past and future.  We are often living in all these levels at once.  But when we’re not, we experience flow—or an absence of time.  Multiple exposures are close to the experience of “flow.”  When I look at a moment in time I “feel” more than can be recorded with a simple click of the shutter. I use multiple exposures on film to record a more accurate picture of how we can recall time transpiring.

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CV

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Education:

  • B.F.A. Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island

  • M.F.A. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois

  • Fulbright Fellowship @ Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland

 

Solo Shows in the NYC area:

  • Susan Eley Fine Arts, NYC

  • Arsenal Gallery @ Central Park, NYC

  • Center for Book Arts, NYC

  • Sarah Nightingale Gallery, Water Mill, NY

  • Henry Street Settlement, NYC

  • A Taste of Art Gallery, NYC

  • A4L Gallery, NYC

  • AIR Gallery, NYC

 

Solo Shows Nationally and Internationally:

  • Black Cat Artspace, Toronto

  • Real Art Ways, Connecticut

  • Tomasulo Gallery @ Union College, New Jersey

  • Sol Mednick Gallery @ The University of the Arts, Philadelphia

  • Woman Made Gallery, Chicago

  • Artemisia Gallery, Chicago

  • Anchor Graphics, Illinois

  • Galleria Joella, Finland

 

Groups shows in the NYC Area:

  • Open Source Gallery, Brooklyn

  • Edward Hopper House, Nyack, NY

  • Associated Gallery, Brooklyn

  • Wave Hill, The Bronx

  • Flux Factory, Queens

  • Elizabeth Heskin Contemporary, NYC

  • Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn

  • Rush Art Gallery, NYC

  • The Fisher Art Gallery at Bard College

  • Denise Bibro Gallery, NYC

  • Momenta Art, Brooklyn

  • Nurture Art, Brooklyn

  • Metaphor Contemporary Art, Brooklyn

  • 440 Gallery, Brooklyn

  • Chashama, NYC

  • Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY

  • WAH Center, Brooklyn

  • Westbeth Gallery, NYC

  • International Print Center, NYC

  • PS122, NYC

 

Group Shows Nationally and Internationally:

  • Gallery 1313, Toronto

  • Gladstone Hotel, Toronto

  • John. Aird Gallery, Toronto

  • Propeller Gallery, Toronto

  • Connections Gallery, Toronto

  • Artscape Wychwood Barns Community Gallery, Toronto

  • Arta Gallery, Toronto

  • The Papermill Gallery, Toronto

  • Gallery Aferro, New Jersey

  • City Without Walls, New Jersey

  • Sohn FIne Art Gallery, Massachusetts

  • Gallery 2014, Florida

  • Diane Kidd Gallery @ Tiffin University, Ohio

  • Kiernan Gallery, Oregon

  • 23 Sandy Gallery, Oregon

  • Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, Florida

  • Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago

  • Susan Hensel Gallery, Minnesota

  • Worcester State College Art Gallery, Massachusetts

  • Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Delaware

  • C. Emerson Fine Art, Florida

  • Gwen Frostic Gallery, Michigan

  • Mad Art Space, Missouri

  • One Eye Gallery, Scotland

  • Wexford Art Centre, Ireland

  • Temporary Services @ Harold Washington Library, Illinois

  • Artemisia Gallery, Illinois

 

Museum Group Shows Nationally and Internationally:

  • Housatonic Museum, Connecticut

  • Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona

  • RISD Art Museum, Rhode Island

  • Turku City Art Museum, Finland

  • The King St. Stephen Museum, Szekesfehervar, Hungary

  • Florida State University Museum, Florida

  • Rockford Art Museum, Illinois

  • Royal Scottish Academy, Scotland

 

Arts Fairs in NYC and Nationally:

  • Scope Art Fair NYC 2011, 2010, 2009

  • Aqua Art Fair Miami 2010

  • Affordable Art Fair NYC 2010

  • Pool Art Fair Miami and NYC, 2008, 2009

  • Bridge Art Fair Miami, 2008, 2009

  • Photo NY 2006

  • Boomerang Art Fair Miami 2006

  • AAF Contemporary Art Fair NYC 2005 & 2004

 

Museum and Public Artists' Book Collections:

  • MoMA, New York

  • Harvard University Library, Massachusetts

  • Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan

  • Wesleyan University, Connecticut

  • Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, DC

  • Centre des Livres d’Artistes, France

  • Boekie Woekie, The Netherlands

  • Francis Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts

  • Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

  • The Tate Museum, England

  • The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York

  • The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

  • The Victoria and Albert, England

  • The New York Public Library, New York

  • Dartmouth College, Maine

  • Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island

  • The British Library, England

  • Chelsea College of Art and Design, England

  • Cleveland Institute of Art, Ohio

  • Carnegie-Mellon University, Pennsylvania

  • U.C.L.A. Art Library, California

  • Yale University, Connecticut

  • National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC

 

Local and National Press:

  • Artvoices Magazine

  • The Hand Magazine

  • Focus Photography Magazine

  • Vasa Journal on Images and Culture

  • New Jersey Star Ledger

  • Tribeca Tribune

  • City Week NYC

  • Phaidon Club

  • New Jersey Westfield Leader

  • NY Arts Magazine

  • Edge Boston

  • Front Magazine, Canada

  • Diffusion Magazine

  • Daily Constitutional

  • Studio Views

  • Drain Online Magazine

  • Animal Online

  • Riverdale Press

  • Umbrella Magazine

  • Chicago Reader

 

Awards:

  • Irreversible Magazine, Selected Photographer, Show and Publication, Miami, Florida

  • Independent Project Grant, Artist Space, NYC

  • Community Art Assistant Grants, 1998 & 1999, Department of Cultural Affairs, Chicago, Illinois

  • Trustee Scholarship, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois

  • Fulbright Fellowship, Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland

  • Andrew Grant Bequest, Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland

  • Rhode Island School of Design, Independent Study Program, Rome, Italy

  • Full Tuition Scholarship for Undergraduate Study at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island

 

Residencies:

  • NY Arts China Residency, Invited Residency, Beijing, China

  • Ragdale Foundation Lake Forest, Illinois, Fellowship Award

  • Pouch Cove Foundation, Pouch Cove, Newfoundland, Canada

  • Taipei International Artists Village, Taipei, Taiwan, Fellowship Award

  • Caldera Foundation, Sisters, Oregon, Fellowship Award

  • Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont, Fellowship Award

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Gibson Contemporary LLC
New York, New York

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