Finding Art in Everyday Life with Allison Morris Lesch

Allison Morris Lesch is a visual artist whose work combines traditional, hand-drawn media with a focus on color, pattern, and design. They publish screen prints, digital prints, and zines.

STL SPEX (Joceline): What are your artistic influences?

Despite majoring in art history, I find my greatest influences outside of museums and galleries. The art that accompanies everyday living is far more intriguing to me – packaging labels, illustrated books, old posters, postage stamps, etcetera. I value anything with accessible aesthetics and well-thought design. Alongside, daily life itself is a key source of inspiration; the things that I experience (whether food, music, or nature) often appear in my artwork.

STL SPEX: What does the process look like when creating pieces that all follow a theme like in “Color Studies?”

A collection of pieces often begins with a single piece that I am interested in exploring further. For example, my series of color studies began as an experiment to loosen up my studio routine. I started playing around with gouache and color pencils, which turned into a free-form exploration of color and texture. I still return to creating color studies whenever I feel stuck in an artistic rut.

STL SPEX: Your “about” section on your website describes you as an “all-around maker;” what other projects are you working on right now?

One of my main side projects for the past year has been moving into and setting up an at-home studio space. I am passionate about interior design in general, so it has been an exciting challenge. At this point, I have the main workspace established, but I am still tweaking to make it more efficient and enjoyable. I try to DIY as much as possible, so it’s an ongoing process.