LeonieTime.com
Title
Handmade Clocks by Leonie Lacouette
Description
about the artist
Leonie Lacouette's studio sits amid wooded, softly rolling hills in rural Ulster County, New York. It occupies the former barn of her family home, just a few steps away, which is crammed to the rafters with a dizzying array of ephemera. "All my life my parents have been collectors," says Leonie. "Not of anything specific; they're just into amassing stuff."
Clearly the penchant for clutter with which she grew up informed her early clocks: they often featured jumbles of found objects exploding out of cast ceramic heads. However, these days it is the dialogue between that past and a present, more pared-down life inspired by the landscape's natural eloquence that reverberates through her time pieces.
Lacouette was born (in 1960) and raised in Manhattan, the daughter of an artist and an actress. Though her father became a printer and her mother eventually left acting, both parents heartily supported Lacouette's creative pursuits. "When I was a kid, my father and I would go to Central Park and draw together," she recalls. Their encouragement led Lacouette to the High School of Art & Design, then to SUNY New Paltz, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in ceramics in 1983. The college was situated near the family's weekend farmhouse in Wallkill, and she convinced her parents to move there permanently, leaving the frenetic existence of New York behind.
