Leslie Leong
Leslie Leong vacationed in the north when she was working as a professional engineer in Vancouver. She fell in love with the northern land and its people and moved to Fort Smith, NWT. She worked as a civil engineer and started Leslie Leong Enterprises selling her photographs. She designed and published Our Forgotten North: A Glimpse of the Subarctic in Canada. Waiting for a return on her investment in publishing, she started Bison Wear selling first t-shirts and expanding to other clothing and bags. She was awarded an arts council grant for a travelling exhibit of her photos. By this time, she was a self-employed artist and single mother.1)
Leslie Leong moved to the Yukon in the 1990s. She is a multi-disciplinary artist who began her career as a photographer and moved into three-dimensional work, often with a functional aspect. She often uses non-traditional materials, like computer parts, in her work.2)