Abstract Ceramic Platter 2018
artist signed, wood fire.
Jim Leedy was an artist who crossed boundaries between materials and genres, representation and abstraction, art and music, creativity and scholarship. He began making art as a very young child. While still in high school, Leedy began working with the Bluefield (WV) Telegraph newspaper as an artist and photographer. After two years as a military photographer, he entered the Richmond Professional Institute of the College of William and Mary in Richmond, VA as an art major of the G.I. Bill.
Leedy was an international artist in both interest and achievement. His diverse and unique talents have led him to a lifetime of accomplishment in clay, painting, public art, works-on-paper, prints, assemblages, installations, and performance. Jim has shown his work, lectures, and does workshops at home and abroad and his works are held in numerous museums and private collections around the world. Noted art critic Matthew Kangas recently wrote a book on Leedy’s career entitled Jim Leedy: Artist Across Boundaries.
A longtime professor of sculpture at the Kansas City Art Institute, Leedy was a devoted teacher. He earned degrees from The College of William and Mary, Michigan State University, and Southern Illinois University, with post-graduate work at Columbia and Ohio State Universities. Among his many honors, Jim has received grants from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Carnegie-Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also received the Kansas City Art Institue’s Distinguished Achievement Award and the Governor’s award for teaching excellence, as well as being named an Honorary Member of the Council of the National Council of Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA).
Jim Leedy has worked tirelessly for decades as a passionate champion of the arts in Kansas City. The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, founded in 1985 and still directed by Jim, is currently home to 6 different galleries. In 2000, the Kansas City Star recognized Jim as one of the 150 most influential living Kansas Citians for his role as the founder of Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District and the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center. In 2001, the Governor and the Historic Kansas City Foundation both recognized his efforts with awards for historical preservation and for his role in founding the Crossroads Arts District.
EDUCATION
Columbia University
1957BFA College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, GI Bill
1958MFA Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois
1959MA Art History Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
PRIMARY WORK EXPERIENCE
1951-1952US Army
1959-1960Associate Professor, Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota
1960-1964Associate Professor, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana
1966-2008Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri
1985Founded the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, Kansas City, Missouri
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Everson Museum Of Art, Syracuse, New York
John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Wisconsin
Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, North Carolina
Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
