Michelle Foreman Leech holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the University of Louisiana in Lafayette. With a concentration in printmaking and focus on relief prints, woodcuts are her first choice. A native of Baldwin County, Michelle is inspired by the flora and fauna of the world around her and depicts in her work the order of life through observation that nature is dependable; providing us with a sense of security and stability. Michelle begins by cutting an image into a wood block or linoleum sheet, the image is inked and transferred to paper by rolling it through a hand cranked press. The block becomes a point of departure.... then a layering process begins. The layering process offers to the viewer the aspect of time and passage or the phases we all move in and out of throughout our lives. Michelle’s images are created from a number of techniques and a variety of media.

“ROOTS”

This body of work reflects a family history for this artist. Michelle’s great grandfather, Frazier Michel Douglass, whom she was named after (el the masculine form; elle the feminine) was a businessman in rural Alabama at the time of the Great Depression. Moving his family to Crenshaw County at the turn of the nineteenth century he purchased a fertilizer factory. He bought land and began growing cotton. He established Luverne Oil Mill with two locations and a saw mill on the Patsaliga River. There was to be much promise in the little town of Luverne AL but the railroad took other routes and then came the depression.

Desperate to keep the mill running during that time the decision to consolidate the mills was made and during the moving of heavy equipment a large drum rolled from a truck and crushed Mr. Douglass. The mill closed after his death but the family held onto the land and the family homestead for many years. As a child Michelle remembers roaming the mill property with her brothers, visiting the farms where the cotton was grown and spent many hours exploring the grand Victorian house that her great grandfather built. In her preteens Michelle and her brothers helped clean and load brick from the old mill building. The brick was trucked to south Baldwin County and used to build the home where Michelle spent most of her youth.

The images in this body of work reflect the images that made lasting impressions; the mill behind the house, the water tank, old wagons, and the Miller house on one of the farms with water well being the source of water there. The Victorian family home still housed artifacts from the early 1900s until it was sold around 2002. Michelle’s great aunt, Aunt Helen lived in the home and nurtured the memories of sewing, gardening and family. Paper white narcissuses were always on the breakfast table at Christmas and daffodils in January and the round green house on the front porch was filled with geranium plants in winter. Magnolia’s and Pecans were as tall as the house and the scuppernong arbor provided much delight in August.

Cotton fields today continue to remind Michelle of her family history. This is where her first memories of family began...these are her roots.