William Lesch

I live and work in an adobe home, studio, and courtyard/gallery I built myself, by hand, in downtown Tucson. I have lived in this home for over 35 years, putting down roots, raising a family, living in place much as my barrio neighbors have for generations. I have learned the names of the plants, the animals, the stones and the watersheds of my homeland, have studied the light and the changing seasons. My art is about this place, an affirmation of life in one place on earth: the Sonoran Desert Bioregion. Our culture has forgotten how to talk to trees, how to sing to stones and saguaros. I have spent a good part of my life walking the desert, kayaking it’s rivers, sitting by it’s streams, listening to those forgotten songs. The songs are of rainclouds forming over a parched land, of new life amid the dry shards, the bones of fallen cactus, of deep canyons, forgotten caves, windswept shores on the Sea of Cortez. My photographs are pieces of life in a desert, from grand landscapes to quiet petals of cactus. The prints I make with love, by hand, in a darkroom turned lightroom, using pigment printers, paint, copper, steel, patinas, sunlight, moonlight, starlight and flashlight.

Meet William Lesch: Photographer, Sculptor, Kayaker, Stone Mason.

Pronouns: He/Him