­Artist Statement Leslie Nobler Looking at ways in which artists bring their heritage, their personal stories, and their hands into their electronic/digital art has long been a research thrust and influence upon my own art practice. I look to both the approach and techniques of traditional fine artists as much as I look to the logic, power, and open-endedness of experimental computer pioneers. I merge manipulated/painted and photographic imagery with digital mark-making through line, motif and texture, using a complex layering process. Allowing just the right amount of one layer’s imagery to blend with another’s can be seen as a metaphor for the balance between the old and the current. This suggests a dichotomy concerning what is handmade and digitally made, which curators have labeled as my delicate ‘balance between the hand and machine.’ Enabling the organic – or more human – to reassert itself over the machine has been a constant focus in my work. There are societal concerns, often linked to the personal stories mentioned above, ever-present in my work as well; social justice and specifically refugee crises, environmentalism and feminism are referenced. As I produced work in the second decade of the 21st century, I researched the art and literature of 20th century genocides and mass migrations, such as the Holocaust, and applied artistry and visual technology to respond to this all-too-persistent plight of humanity. The rise of Black Lives Matter, ethnophobia, and the rise of white supremacism in the US and Europe only intensifies the need to look at, reflect upon and discuss such plagues of our day, a repeating pattern laid down long ago. In my current work, I present varied depictions of this forced emigration – the flight from terror and danger – from ancient times to the present with a focus on African colonialism and the Middle East/Syrian situation. While the experience of war, genocide, and slavery are obviously wretched, I seek to seduce the viewer with color, pattern and materials, only to then offer up this painful subtext. I am not interested in ghastly imagery, but rather in luring someone in and creating a thought-provoking moment. My art practice combines an interest in textiles and surface design, book arts and experimental printmaking. Because I often reference the history of craft by our ancestors, graphic work on fiber and paper and traditional needlework, this work presents an innovative – plus environmentally sensitive – blend of art disciplines, new and old. In investigating abstract-storytelling imagery, from manipulated photo-montage to graphic and linear patterning, balanced with my visual explorations into art/craft history, I hope that these pieces present poetic stories, some more wistful than others. Mixed media art is my vehicle for grappling with technology versus the spiritual soul, social justice – replete with our current backsliding into hate, and patterns of both resistance and change. Through this new work, I invite viewers to be pensive, watchful and considerate about the rights of minorities, women and refugees and to perhaps grow/expand their perception in the process. And in the end I deeply appreciate that our society allows freedom of expression and political statements, and that this art, and art of resistance, is free to hang in a public space.