Leslie Bostrom: Wild Stories
April 23 – June 13, 2025
Granoff Center for the Creative Arts
Opening Reception: April 23, 2025, 5:30 – 7:00 PM

Leslie Bostrom’s artworks engage the vexed issue of human and animal relations: the human-caused decline of the environment and the encroachment of “civilization” over nature. 

An avid birder, the artist often tells her stories through avian conflicts. The Bird Disaster Series, for example, details numerous afflictions suffered by or visited upon birds. Other of the artist’s interests include human migration, feminism, and LGBQTIA issues. Bostrom approaches her subjects in oversized canvases and with lush colors and active painterly brushstokes. While the topics are serious, the artist’s depictions are most often bright and vibrant, sometimes ironic, or even humorous. 

Mounted in conjunction with Bostrom’s retirement from the Department of Visual Art, Wild Stories commemorates the artist’s thirty-six-year tenure. The survey exhibition includes works in a variety and combination of media, dating from 1986 to the present, along with a selection of Bostrom’s artist notebooks. Part sketchbook, part journal, the notebooks are Bostrom’s constant companion and serve as a record of her day-to-day life.

Building Hours: Monday – Friday: 8:30 AM – 10 PM | Saturday: 12 PM – 6 PM | Sunday: 12 PM – 8 PM

Leslie Bostrom

Born in 1951 in East Orange, NJ, Leslie Bostrom lives and works in Providence, RI, Cape Cod and the Adirondacks. She received her BA from the University of Maine, Orono, and her MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Between undergraduate and graduate school, she worked as a master printer in San Francisco, specializing in intaglio. Bostrom has exhibited her work in solo shows in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, St. Paul, Philadelphia, Seoul, South Korea, and Sydney, Australia, and has been represented in group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Her work has been reviewed in many publications including small notes in the New York Times and the New Yorker; at length in Art New England; and in Damn Fine Art by New Lesbian Artists (Cherry Smyth, 1996), and Lesbian Art in American: A Contemporary History (Harmony Hammond, 2000). Her latest exhibition, Wildlife, in July 2024, was in San Francisco at Anglim Trimble Gallery.

Jo-Ann Conklin

Jo-Ann Conklin has worked in the museum field for more than 40 years. She was the director of the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University from 1996 to 2020, during which time she was instrumental in the establishment of the University’s Public Art Program. From 1980–­1996, Conklin held positions as registrar and later curator of graphic arts at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Specializing in contemporary art and the history of photography, Conklin has curated more than seventy exhibitions. She has published catalogue essays on artists as varied as Rudolf Koppitz, Annette Messager, Do Ho Suh, Joan Fontcuberta, Julie Blackmon, and Lucas Foglia.  Her exhibition Dead Animals, or the curious occurrence of taxidermy in contemporary art, 2016, surveyed the work of eighteen artists, including Maurizio Cattelan, Nicholas Galanin, Snæbjörnsdóttie/Wilson, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Conklin holds a BFA in photography from Maryland Institute College of Art and an MA in art history from the University of Iowa.

The artist and guest curator would like to thank the Brown Arts Institute teams including: Peter Chenot, Director of Marketing and Communications; Chira Del Sesto, Senior Director of Administration and Operations; Qiwen Ju, Visual Designer; at the Bell Gallery Ian Budish, Exhibitions Installation Manager; Naushon Hale, Preparator; Kate Hao, Curatorial Coordinator; Kate Kraczon, Director of Exhibitions and Chief Curator; and Nicole Wholean, University Curator and Registrar; and at the Department of Visual Art Si Jie Loo, Academic Department Manager; and Ed Osborn, Department Chair.