Where
5256A Natrona Way
Pittsburgh, PA 15201
by appointment only
Write emails to leah@leahpatgorski.com
Follow @lpatgo on instagram
Subscribe to the occasional newsletter
Why
Humans have evolved over millenia with textiles both on and around us. We should not allow one century of drywall and air conditioning to distance us from their flexible, connective, and poetic potential.
In a machine age, dressmaking is one of the last refuges of the human, the personal, the inimitable.
How
We work with architects, interior designers, artists, and end users to create textile elements for spaces. We bring ideas and implementation for vivid soft walls, operable partitions, and tailored panels that take interior and exterior spaces beyond the ordinary while adding comfort and improving acoustics. Extensive experience with coordination of projects, documents, and presentations translates into plans and details that sync with larger design goals.
Connections
For the true seekers,
here is the old links page
Events
The Other Border Wall Project
A collaboration with Tereneh Idia
and Jenn Nagle Myers since 2017
to creatively resist the Border Wall and its message.
More activities coming in 2021.
Visit otherborderwallproject.com to check the resources we have gathered and projects we have produced.
We must come down to earth from the clouds where we live in vagueness, and experience the most real thing there is: material.
Artist Statement
By reminding us of the handmade, and illustrating abundant math and geometry, the woven materials surrounding us are reminders of human inventiveness. Linens, robes, and draperies, and the like impart coziness, pliability, privacy, and warmth to life.
Whether making a simple fabric shade or a complex sculpture, the same consideration goes into each seam I make. These different areas of my work are equally important, and in every case I am going for the right mix of objectivity and self-investment. A studio practice I have carried on since 2003 generates sculptures, partitions, and painting-like objects made of textiles. In creating sculptures, I work methodically, sometimes beginning with paper models to work towards quiet and mysterious volumes. With two-dimensional works, chance details slip into measured courses as they build. Pieces move back and forth between rule-following and improv, color experiments and found hues. Studio work influences my perspective on intangibles like intimacy, loss, growth, shadows, and the history behind materials.
Resume
Indeed, tone or voice is what you get when, larynxlike, you breathe through structure.
