Glazier and Painter Leila Kleiman

Leila Kleiman was born in Chicago. She attended college in Arizona, and kept traveling West – teaching school.  She made her commitment to art in graduate school, a place with enough latitude to try many forms of expression.

Kleiman began her career as a traditional oil painter, first studying with Harry Mintz and later with Gilah Yellin Hirsch. Then the opportunity to study with Allan Hauser brought her to stone and the 3-D world of the sculptor. Stone teaches the removal of that which is not inherently necessary, leaving the form to emerge from the background. The effect was to emphasize line over color, changing the focus of her artwork.

The combination of original dyed paper designs, combined structurally with collage and etching has become a marriage of her two-dimensional and three-dimensional work.  Collage in “glass” is a culmination of all her media experience.

Kleiman has said the wall work is sculpture in two-dimensional form. All the present pieces follow a flat format, much influenced by Japanese wood block prints. The negative space is as important as the space filled with color and line giving the viewer an expressionistic impression of her travels.