Leslie Erganian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Leslie Jeanne Erganian, (born in Oak Park, Illinois) is an American artist. Her work is influenced by the Surrealists and often incorporates found objects and photographic images into collage and assemblage constructions. The elements of waking dreams comprise the major themes of her work which include menace and loss, nature and myth, identity and discovery revealed in multiple layers.
After graduating from William Fremd High School she began her university studies as a pre-med biology student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In the middle of her sophomore year, Leslie transferred to the University of Southern California where she began to focus on art. She received her BA with a double major in art history and fine art in California, before returning to Illinois for further studies as a graduate student in photography. She received an MFA in fine arts from the University of Illinois, and shortly thereafter found representation by the Phyllis Needleman Gallery in Chicago. It is here that she participated in her first group show exhibiting a series of hand painted photographic self-portraits exploring female fairy tale mythology.
Leslie returned to California to obtain an MFA in performing arts from the UCLA School of theater film and television where she attended on a Graduate Fellowship. She went on to contribute to the production of numerous film and television projects for Warner Bros., MGM, Dreamworks, NBC, MTV and PBS as art director, set decorator, and prop designer.
In 1999, she made her first television appearance as a guest on Discovery Channel’s The Christopher Lowell Show. This appearance led to numerous successive appearances on the Emmy winning series as well as a special guest appearance on NBC’s The Rosie O’Donnell Show. In 2002 she became a regular contributor to the Hallmark Channel in a series entitled The Soul of a House appearing weekday mornings on New Morning.
In 1996 under the label Lost Continents, she began to create custom designed functional art for private and business clients including Laura Dern and Alexander Payne for recipients including Melissa Etheridge, Francis Coppola and Sean Penn. Her work has been carried in stores throughout Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Her work as a creative consigliere has included teaching appointments at UCLA and at U of I. She authored the curriculum for the United States Department of Education funded program in film design for the Deaf Arts Council, volunteered as an art docent for Santa Clara County K – 5 schools, participated in the Silicon Valley Cultural Initiatives 2006 development program, and is an ongoing volunteer with the Screen Actors Guild advancing verbal literacy through the performing arts.
Leslie is a lifetime member of The Society of Architectural Historians Southern California Chapter alongside her fiancé, architect and author Wolfgang Wagener, AIA, RIBA. She contributed a chapter to his architectural monograph Raphael Soriano published by Phaidon Press.
