“Tenderness contains an element of sadness. It is not the sadness of feeling sorry for yourself or feeling deprived, but it is a natural situation of fullness… In order to be a good warrior, one has to feel this sad and tender heart.”
– Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
About Leslie
Leslie is an artist, graphic designer, and entrepreneur. She was born in Los Angeles and raised by a long lineage of women who survived the Japanese Occupation together and eventually fled from communist North Korea.
Leslie has been creating art since childhood as a way of learning, communicating and self soothing.
After learning different methods of printmaking, she fell in love with screen printing, and often creates art inspired by the aesthetic and process of screen printing.
Leslie often combines her illustrations with text, a product of her training as a graphic designer, and as an homage to the many text based artists that have inspired her.
Leslie creates art and illustrations about rock climbing under the moniker Dynamite Starfish. She also creates positive and uplifting work for the Chaos to Growth project, through which she donated 200 uplifting journals to nurses affected by Covid-19. She continues to create artwork that uplifts and soothes, and shares her stories and life lessons via the Same Human Being podcast.
“Art is my way of exploring the varied landscapes of our minds. How do we navigate our thoughts and feelings, and how do they affect our courses of action? As we move through our days, we encounter situations that invoke a vast array of emotions and responses: sentimentality, risk, avoidance, pride, poignancy, regret, ritual, pain, impatience…
I use my art as a way to notice the space between signal and response. In that space is an infinity of lessons we can learn about our own behavior, and when we become more aware of how and why we do what we do, we can better understand humanity and empathize with others. The interplay between introspection, our environment, and interconnectedness inform much of my work.”
– Leslie Kim
lesliesamkim.com
instagram.com/lesliesamkim
On display for one week beginning 3.26.21
Helms Design Center at 8745 Washington Boulevard
All artwork is copyrighted work of the artist. All rights reserved. Images not to be used without permission.
