Meet Leah Aegerter

We had the good fortune of connecting with Leah Aegerter and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Leah, do you have a favorite quote or affirmation?
My mantra for the past year has been “In with uncertainty, out with expectation.”

When I decided to pursue my artistic practice full time two years ago, I was constantly stressing over how to make ends meet. All of a sudden, there was this pressure to sell my work and thus make sure that everything I made was a success, but that is not the way that a practice develops. Failure and iteration are essential to artistic growth. As I’ve learned to let go my grasp on constant stability, I have to remind myself that the unknowns of life will provide in the ways I need them to. By embracing uncertainty and letting go of both internal and external expectations, I open myself up to fresh, intuitive ideas and unexpected opportunities.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am an artist who makes sculpture and installation about the animate forces of the natural world. My work has always been about my environment in some way: When I was studying sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design, my work referenced New England’s distinctive architecture, and when I moved back West after graduating in 2017, my practice shifted towards the mountain and desert landscapes nearby. Numerous formative experiences in the landscape have helped me realized how alive everything is around me, and animism has been at the forefront of my conceptual practice for the past few years. Finding my voice in new content and material has been a journey — one that I am still on.

I worked at Anderson Ranch Arts Center is Snowmass Village for five years after graduating with my BFA before I decided it was time to take the leap and be a full-time artist. Investing my creative energy into myself has been the best decision I’ve ever made. Although life is a little less stable without a full-time job, the fulfillment that I gain from my studio practice is well worth it. My practice has developed at an exponential rate over the past two years, and I can see the stability in sight, even if it is in the distance. I’ve come to accept that the only way out is through. I have to experience the failures and successes, and perhaps life will never feel totally stable as a working artist, but being a happier person allows me to give energy back into my community more effectively.

While I worked at the Ranch, I had access to world-class facilities in woodworking, metalworking, digital fabrication, and more, which allowed my practice to flourish within the craft environment. When I left my position there, I moved into a 20-foot shipping container studio and had to reinvent my relationship to material and process. At that point, I shifted my artistic focus away from wood and towards paper, a material that I suspected could translate my ideas well.

My main process in the studio involves 3D scanning textures from the landscape — specifically geological textures — as a way to extract a piece of the environment without altering it in any way. While this has been part of my practice since about 2020, I was previously outputting 3D scans by carving them in wood on a CNC router. With the transition to a blank studio space with few amenities, that output shifted towards the 3D printer, where I began printing the scans as molds onto which I cast paper. My sculptures are abstract portraits of moments that I experience in the landscape. They feature real textures from around the Southwest and help me confront what it means to be a human in this current landscape.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Living in Carbondale, nestled into the Elk Range of the Rockies, my itinerary for visitors usually involves a lot of outdoor, land-based activities. Carbondale is more of a summer destination — while just 40 minutes from Aspen, it’s a few thousand feet lower than the ski town and is more vibrant in summer than winter.

Some of my favorite outdoor activities are packrafting on the Roaring Fork and Colorado Rivers, hiking in the nearby mountains to high alpine lakes, dipping in the roadside Penny hot springs along the Crystal River, and biking along the Rio Grande Bike path than runs along the river from Aspen to Glenwood Springs. Whenever friends and family come to visit, my itinerary involves some combination of the above. My favorite hiking trail in the area is Capitol Creek trail, which winds through a spectacular aspen grove and has unparalleled views of Capitol Peak along the way.

Carbondale also has a lot of delicious food, especially fresh from the numerous local, organic farms nearby. In the summer, I always cook with local ingredients from my farm share at Seed Peace, making a point to entice visitors with lots of fresh produce.

In addition to food and outdoors, my itinerary always includes some form of engagement with my local art scene. The Roaring Fork Valley has numerous thriving non-profit arts organizations worth visiting: The Launchpad (Carbondale), The Art Base (Basalt), Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village), the Aspen Art Museum and the Red Brick Center for the Arts (Aspen) to name a few. These organizations draw a lot of contemporary artists to our area and keep the soul of the arts alive.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My arts community here deserves the biggest dedication – I am surrounded by other creatives who support my work in numerous ways. Nori Pao, Sabrina Piersol, Alleghany Meadows, Daniel Joseph Watkins, and Hank Weaver (among many others!), are the artists and curators who make my practice more fulfilling.

Website: https://www.leahaegerter.com/

Instagram: @leahaegerter

Image Credits
The first three images should be credited to Nikki Hausherr – the layered work with multiple wooden circles, the rainbow diptych, and the all-red layered work with the wooden circular “face”. The rest of the images can be credited to me, the artist.