Leslie Koptcho
Professor
225-578-5690 | B26 Hatcher Hall
lkoptcho@lsu.edu
MFA Cranbrook Academy of Art
Leslie Koptcho studied art at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and at Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she earned her MFA. Currently, she is a Professor of Art at Louisiana State University, where she teaches printmaking, papermaking and the arts-of-the-book. During her tenure at LSU, she was named the LSU School of Art Emogene Pliner Distinguished Professor, which is awarded to acknowledge sustained creative accomplishments, scholarship, and research.
Koptcho’s artwork is included in over 40 permanent collections including Bibliotheque National de France, Department of Prints & Photographs, Paris, FRANCE; Brooklyn Museum; Fogg Art Museum; Library of Congress, Artists’ Books Collection; Marion Koogler McNay Museum; Mino Washi Museum, Director’s Collection, Mino, JAPAN; New Orleans Museum of Art; The New York Public Library, Spencer Collection; Printmaking Museum of Duoro, Alijo, PORTUGAL; Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Brisbane, AUSTRALIA; and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco/Legion of Honor Museum, The Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books.
Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in over 250 venues, 14 of which were solo exhibitions. Botanica Collectanea, her current body of work was recently presented at the Baton Rouge Gallery Center for Contemporary Art, and at the LSU Museum of Art.
Koptcho’s professional activities have taken her to Egypt, France, India, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia, and Spain. Notable awards include a Yaddo Fellowship; an American Cultural Specialist Grant, which was funded and administered by the US Information Agency; and 2 ATLAS awards, which were sponsored the Board of Regents of the State of Louisiana.
Koptcho was twice selected to participate as an artist in residence at Art Print Residence in Arenys de Munt, Spain; and at the Museu Molí Paperer de Capellades; the latter was sponsored by the Generalitat de Catalunya, Spain.
In the summer of 2025, she was a Resident Fellow at the American College of the Mediterranean in Aix-en-Provence, France.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Central to my work are the complex variations of form found in nature. I see flora and fauna as potent metaphors representing growth and transition, as well as empathy and survivability. I gravitate to the out of doors but look deep within for emotional connections that remind us of what it means to be human and what qualities define individuality. I am compelled to overlay and compare living organisms, working much like a comparative biologist, only visually. By examining, replicating, adapting, and combining these elements, I aim to create compelling visual polemics and, in a small way, hint at the mysteries held within life itself.
Recently, inspiration has come from botanical sources, herbals, and invasive plants specific to the Gulf Coast region of the United States. Many of these plants are in my own backyard competing with native plants. I have also created unique, hand formed papers with each of the plants I have studied.
As an artist and educator, one who both practices and teaches the arts of the book, I have a profound appreciation for the various ways that hand formed paper, illumination, illustration, and printing have been combined for centuries to make beautiful herbals, be they medieval manuscripts, incunabula—herbals represent some of finest examples of early printing—or more recent iterations. I find herbals especially alluring because of their aesthetic qualities, and because they often comprise more than plant identification: they can embody storytelling and magic, provide insights into cultures and places, and reveal the mysterious operations of nature, malevolent or benevolent. My latest prints are meant to serve as a contemporary celebration of the time-honored tradition of “botanical” prints while offering a more expressive point of view of the natural world—one that highlights current environmental challenges facing both local and global communities.
Each plant has a different story to tell.
Watch “In the Studio with Leslie Koptcho”
Courses
ART 1360 Introduction to Printmaking
ART 2360 Intermediate Printmaking
ART 2361 Honors Intermediate Printmaking
ART 2342 Papermaking
ART 2381 Introduction to Book Arts
ART 4300 Senior Project in Printmaking
ART 4341 Advanced Papermaking
ART 4381 Advanced Book Arts
ART 4366 Special Studies in Printmaking
ART 7300 Graduate Printmaking
ART 8000 Thesis Research
Portfolio
