This week on 8111, Leah Anton. Leah was born on a dairy farm in Northern Minnesota and moved to the Twin Cities shortly thereafter where she grew up. Her mother worked as a nurse and also took art classes. At the age of five Leah’s mom took her to a life drawing class and it sparked a lifelong love for art and drawing. Throughout middle school and high school Leah was a self described “art kid”. She experimented with painting on a large scale, doing murals, working with airbrush, and exploring photography.
Leah attended Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) as an undergrad and continued honing her skills. While continuing to paint she began to spend more time doing photography. After college Leah moved to New York City, working at Grey Advertising and freelancing at a design studio doing photo assistant work connected to architecture.
After a few years in New York, Leah moved back to Minnesota and landed a job working at WCCO on the PaintBox. Her ability to draw was the hook that landed her the gig and she quickly learned the technical parts of the system. From there she started freelancing in post-production houses around the country doing ad work and sports graphics.
After a freelance stint in Portland, Leah was on her way to Baja for holiday and stopped to visit friends in San Francisco. She wound up landing an entry level job at ILM doing wire removal on Hook. After about six weeks, the job ended and Leah got a call from a friend at CBS to come work the Olympics in France. When she came back to California she worked for the start-up company 3DO and was later hired back doing painting and composting at ILM where she worked for the next 18 years.
Today Leah lives in the Bay Area, continues to write, and working doing photography. It was so much fun talking with Leah and hearing her story.
