artist statement | BIO

As a mixed media artist working primarily in the medium of ceramics, I find the four classical elements - earth, water, fire and air - play a key role in my creative process. Through stories rendered in clay, I make meaning out of life’s challenges and find the essence of my true self centered in each piece.

Artistic inspiration comes through integrating my most difficult experiences. For example, I have recently made a series inspired by my experience as a breast cancer survivor. The specific motifs I am using now came to me through retreats I attended out in nature, processing the cancer experience with other survivors. In 2024, I attended a Casting for Recovery retreat where I learned fly fishing. While learning from a fishing guide how to roll cast, I was visually drawn to the way the fishing line looked like calligraphy bearing hidden messages. It became part of my artistic expression to untangle the inspirational words I found hidden in the lines and translate them into carvings in clay. In 2025, I spent 6 days with fellow survivors traveling by raft on the Salmon River. Recollections of those retreats inspire the direction my artwork is taking through the motifs of river life and metaphors of fishing and healing.”Breathe”, “Current”, “Movement”, “Energy”, and “Transformation" are words the Salmon River gifted me to carry me forward on my journey. Art and nature have been elemental in my recovery. 

In reference to my ancestral lineage, I often use Celtic spirals in my pottery. I enjoy making my own designs as hand carved clay stamps and working with them as repeating patterns. This particular pottery stamping technique, among others, was passed down to me through mentorship by folk pottery artist Cheri Pann of the Mosaic Tile House, Venice Beach, California. The spirit of experimentation blended with tradition found in her studio was seeded into my art practice. Nowadays for me, the magic happens when stamped and carved clay meets layers of hand-painted glaze and becomes transformed by cone 5 firing in my kiln.

In addition to my art practice, I am passionate in my non-profit work with Treasure Valley Artists Alliance. I am building new connections and community among artists in the region of Southern Idaho, which has become my adopted home.

Leslie Jay Bosch is a fine artist with a passion for arts community organizing in her adopted home state of Idaho. Her education includes a Scholarship to the Ryman Arts Program, and a BFA from Art Center College of Design, where her focus was sculpture and environmental design. In 2018 she received an Alexa Rose Artist Grant for the purchase of her kiln. In 2023 she received an Idaho Commission on the Arts Grant to produce ceramic artworks. She is actively involved in the Boise based non-profit, Treasure Valley Artist Alliance as President of the Board and art exhibitions Curator.

Her work has been published in various magazines including Western Interiors & Design, Garden Design, and Celebrated Living. It has also appeared in newspapers such as The Idaho Press Tribune,The Argonaut, The Santa Monica Mirror, and the LA Times.