Artist in Residence Alumna, Leah Aegerter
"Being an Artist in Residence at Grand Canyon provided so many opportunities for my work to expand. As an avid outdoors person, the easy access to backpacking and hiking in the canyon provided continuous inspiration and material for me to collect digitally. I was able to put my regular life stresses and responsibilities on hold, and immerse myself deeply into the canyon and my work. The residency provided me the opportunity to slow down and consider my relationship to the landscape at a deeper level than I have previously allowed myself. I enjoyed the solitary nature of the residency, as it forced me towards an inward journey that I believe will benefit my artistic practice for years to come."
Public Programs
To engage park visitors and the local Grand Canyon community during her residency, Aegerter hosted two in-person workshops on paper and form making. This include a workshop with students at Grand Canyon School. These workshops gave participants a chance to learn about aspects of Leah's sculptural process while making art that helped them look at Grand Canyon in new way. Accessible to all, participants were guided through various papermaking techniques.
About the Artist
Leah Aegerter
Leah Aegerter is an artist working in object-based sculpture and installation. She lives and works in Carbondale, CO, and spends much of her free-time exploring mountains and deserts of the American West on foot and raft. Using a combination of digital fabrication techniques and traditional processes in materials such as wood and steel, her work investigates her relationship to landscape and intimacy with material.
Leah received a BFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design in 2017, and worked most recently as the Studio Coordinator of Digital Fabrication at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village CO from 2019-2022. In 2022 she was named an Aspen Art Museum Artist Fellow.
During her residency, Aegerter spent many nights backpacking below the rim, intimately exploring the Canyon and the emotions of solitude and wholeness that she experienced.
The artist explained that not everyone can experience moments like the ones she did in Grand Canyon but that art can be a more accessible way for people to experience a place, and consequently, the emotions that occupy it.
She described her process as capturing and developing a relationship with the land at one given moment in geologic history—a present moment, as Aegerter experiences it.
“I would hope that people can kind of feel the tenderness within the sculptures and just be able to put themselves in the headspace that I was in when I was capturing that particular 3D scan or building the sculpture,” Aegerter said.
During her time at Grand Canyon, Aegerter sat down with Ted Simons at Arizona PBS to talk about her creative process. Watch the full interview here.
Leah leads a PaperMaking Workshop for students at Grand Canyon School
Leah working in the Studio at Verkamps