Leonardo Drew

Artist Leonardo Drew joins art critic, author, and Rail Editor-at-Large Eleanor Heartney for a conversation. We conclude with a poetry reading by imogen xtian smith.

Leonardo Drew
Artist Leonardo Drew is known for creating contemplative abstract sculptural works that play upon a tension between order and chaos. Drew’s works have been shown internationally and are included in numerous public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and others. Recent solo museum exhibitions include shows at the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson (2020); North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (2020); de Young Museum, and Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, California (2017). Drew was born in 1961 in Tallahassee, Florida, and he grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Eleanor Heartney
New York-based art critic Eleanor Heartney is the author of numerous books on contemporary art. Heartney is a Contributing Editor for Art in America and has written extensively for publications including Artnews, The New Art Examiner, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. She is author of several noteworthy books about art, such as Art & Today (2008), Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art (2004), co-author of After the Revolution: Women who Transformed Contemporary Art (2007) (winner of the Susan Koppelman Award), and most recently, Doomsday Dreams: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Contemporary Art (2019). She is an Editor-at-Large for the Rail.

Poet & performer imogen xtian smith has had work appear in Apogee, Nat. Brut, Peach Mag, & Tagvverk (among others), as well as in We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics. Their debut collection, STEMMY THINGS, is out from Nightboat in Fall, 2022. imogen lives & works on Lenape lands / Brooklyn.