About Leah
Leah Gonzales (b.1988) is an emerging visual artist working in a range of media including painting, sculpture, embroidery, animation, installation, and ceramics to further explore her identity as a queer woman of mixed heritage. Influenced by indigenous folk-art of the Southwest, ancient world art, pre-columbian art, Surrealism, and New Objectivity, she further incorporates personal motifs and symbols to create an allegory of her spiritual relationship to both nature and humanity.
Gonzales’ work has been exhibited primarily in the Los Angeles and New York region, and has won awards like Best in Show for her animation “In Loving Memory” (2016), as is a Grant Recipient from Cerf+ for her ceramic craft in 2021. Her work has been collected by collectors such as Milton Cohen of Baltimore, MD and Sandy Besser of Santa Fe, NM. Her largest installation to date was “Sauce Alley”, held in the catacombs of the Old Mint located in downtown San Francisco, CA, 2017.
Leah is an exhibiting artist in resident at both AIRWAY through Cottonwood Arts Center and True North Art Gallery.
Her work in community and education is important to her studio practice and career. Gonzales has worked to bring artwork and creative events to underserved communities throughout California through artist run spaces and collectives. She is an Adjunct Studio Art Professor online at Santa Monica College, in Santa Monica, CA and as well as in person at Bemis School of Fine Art through Colorado College. Her work in diversity has been through educating herself through coursework to equitize her classroom and center underserved students in the institution of the community college system.
Leah Gonzales holds an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute as a Diversity Scholar recipient from 2014-2017. She also holds a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art (2011) where she graduated Cum Laude. At MICA she was awarded an opportunity as a Honors student to live and study in Florence, Italy, at the Studio Art Center International in 2010.