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Brian Leach's art

Moving things around in front of his apartment Tuesday afternoon, Steamboat Springs artist and carpenter Brian Leach explained his process for turning a two-by-four into a work of art.

"I get stuff going like this - this is the start of something," Leach said, taking two pieces of glued and clamped wood off his workspace. Leach will get two or three of these blank slates going - wood that's been framed, jointed, glued or otherwise rearranged - before he starts sketching designs on them.

Lately, those designs have moved away from familiar patterns to mirror the kind of shapes he uses in illustrations: strained hands with sharp lines characterize two of the new works Leach plans to bring to Urbane clothing store for a solo show.

That exhibition will feature about a dozen of Leach's highly colorful and sometimes political illustrations, along with a few woodcarvings with burn-pen-produced designs. The show opens with a reception at 5 p.m. March 6.

Leach has three pieces of art on display now at Urbane. They're the same three pieces he entered in the store's February call for art contest, which he won. Urbane co-owners Trent Kolste and Mel LeBlanc said they chose Leach "because of the arresting quality of his work and the complicated feelings it produces."

"I figured there was really nothing to lose," Leach said about entering work in the call for art. "A place like Steamboat, it's neat that a place like that is doing something just a little bit different."

Leach has been doing illustrations for as long as he can remember, but he started taking the work more seriously a few years ago.

"It's just been in the last three or so years, but it's become more for me than just doodling or sketching - it's something I've become passionate about," he said. Leach works time to create his art into his schedule as a carpenter. A wood-burned illustration can take 40 hours or longer - the equivalent of a full work week - so it can be a difficult balance. But the labor-intensive work is worth the artistic result, he said.

"I love working with wood, and I've made a living doing so, and I picked up a burn pen and just kind of started experimenting," Leach said. "It started off with my hammer handle, and I've been doing the burning for a little over three years, and this is kind of where it's taken me."

The three pieces he has going in his apartment/carpentry workshop/art studio could take a lot of different forms, but they could go in the same direction as the illustration/burned wood crossover works.

"After I prepare the wood, it's not really too terribly planned out," he said. Whatever direction his work takes, Leach is fairly sure he won't see it coming.

"It's like everything, I suppose," he said. "If you keep doing something, it will evolve and change."