Lesley Nakonechny is a Winnipeg-based graphic designer and artist whose art practice focuses on themes of nature, prairie plants, and science. Lesley visited IISD-ELA as an Artist-in-Residence from August 11 to 16, 2019.
Lesley graduated from the Graphic Design program at Red River College in 2004 and currently works full-time designing seed industry magazines. She works with a variety of media such as digital and alternative photography, printmaking, found objects, and video to deal with issues of time, memory, identity, and fragmenting of self.
Lesley spent her time out at IISD-ELA using pinhole cameras, shooting on Super 8 film, and making lumen prints that you can explore in the galleries below. See more of Lesley’s work at www.lesnakodesigns.com and follow her on Instagram.
Lumen Prints
Lumen printing is a camera-less process that uses UV light (such as the sun) to expose images onto photographic paper. During her stay at IISD-ELA, Artist-in-Residence Lesley Nakonechny spent some time on the shore of Lake 240 where she exposed a series of lumen prints of some of the flora found onsite, such as tansy, ferns and blueberry plants. After roughly 3 hours of sun exposure, she stored the prints in a UV-safe bag to bring back home to be “fixed” by soaking them in a photographic solution to stabilize the images.
The final exposures were collected in a handmade book called “Lumen Prints of Experimental Lakes Area Flora” which was showcased at a Manitoba Craft Council show in 2020.
See more of Lesley’s lumen prints in the gallery below.
Pinhole Photography
During her tenure as IISD-ELA’s Artist-in-Residence, Lesley Nakonechny experimented with underwater pinhole photography—a technique that uses a simple camera made from a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Although the sealed camera tins filled with water and didn’t work out as imagined, the resulting photos were touched by lake water which produced some beautiful effects.
Super 8 Footage
During her time at IISD-ELA as Artist-in-Residence, Lesley experimented with Super 8 film and produced these fascinating videos.