Leslie N Polk is a scholar and multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of Black cultural aesthetics and comparative religion. Leslie’s interests in global contemplative movements and sacred scripture inspire her ekphrastic collage and poetic storytelling (including spoken-word poetry, film, and stage performance), inviting folks into an assemblage of texts, images, and ancestral wisdom. Her writing and making thus become a pathway for cultural re-memory and an avenue to explore the possibilities that emerge when traditions and practices are reimagined for personal and collective transformation. 

Leslie was an avid journaler as a child, eventually leading to screenplay writing, spoken-word poetry, and then playwriting. While she has no technical training in the arts, Leslie has spent 15+ years developing her storytelling skills. Her collage art practice also began in grade school, with wallets and purses from newspaper, magazine clippings, and duct tape—using images and texts that honored Black music artists in pop culture. While still advocating a mixed-media approach, it has expanded to include torn paper, fabric, and found objects, blurring the lines of sacred and secular, offering social critique and space for conversations about social and religious identity. A notable method is Leslie’s use of small pieces of paper, which lend a mosaic-like style to the backgrounds and other large areas of her pieces, alluding to early religious art, where textual and cultural narratives were displayed as mosaics on the ceilings and floors of notable buildings.  

Through deep reflection, retrieval, and repair, her goal in this work is to invoke and inspire joyful yet focused intentions for being the best co-creators in this life process. For more information on Leslie’s academic scholarship on religion and art, please click here for her CV.