Artist-to-Artist Conversation
Leon Finley + Daniel Coka (1 of 4)
Leon: I totally agree with the way that education is this capitalist, colonialist thing. I feel like I had to recover from art school. I spent five years being like, ‘Okay, I’m going to undo all the shit that was told to me, all the things that were attached to me, and have to come back to myself and connect with myself.’
And it’s interesting. When Covid first started, I didn’t go to my studio for like three months. I was just in a place of suspension. I love what you said about being in a time of quiet, and being like, ‘I don’t have to make as much right now.’ At least for me, I’m asking myself, ‘How does art look?’
And what’s happened for me is, I’ve started making art as healing. And just thinking of it as, ‘How can art be helpful to someone in a very, very direct and practical way?’
Listen to Leon and Daniel in this podcast, made in partnership with Michelle Hagewood of the Centrum Emerging Artists Residency, Port Townsend, Washington.
Leon Finley is an interdisciplinary artist and queer, trans person from Seattle. His work is created from his experience having a physical and spiritual body and explores relationships between all kinds of bodies: human, animal, plant, object, sound, energy and the unseen.