Oakland-based and educated at UC Santa Barbara, Tulane, UC Berkeley, and Laney, Leslie Plato Smith spent much of her career as Associate Vice-Chancellor of Governmental Relations for City College of San Francisco. Highlights from her career include receiving a national award for bringing together 60 different art departments to create 125 life size statues to visually show how budget cuts negatively impact students and to fight to keep the doors open to a college education, and exhibiting at the European Cultural Centre’s Venice Biennale exhibition to question who are are: we all came out of Africa, but are we one or will we retreat to our tribal caves. In her own backyard, she uses art to emphasize that all life matters and to end othering.

Plato Smith’s grandfather was born on the Choctaw Reservation and her orphaned grandmother was born to immigrant parents from Denmark and Sweden. Her work focuses on indigenous issues, migration, importance of wildlife, our environment and human/wildlife interaction and responsibility. has always been of utmost importance.

Color, strokes, gestures, shapes, direct and emotional communication. Her artist mother taught her to draw off the edge of the paper and never be afraid of making mistakes.

WHO WE ARE