Biography

Lesley Gamble was born in the north and has been heading south happily ever since.  After a career training show horses, she traveled the world working for an antique textile dealer based in Istanbul, researched horned headdresses worn by Afghan women at the turn of the 20th century, became a body worker, a feminist and a free diver (not necessarily in that order), and earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Florida.  Areas of interest include 1960s and 70s feminist body and performance art, feminist and poststructuralist theory, histories of the gendering of touch, social practice art, eco-art and relational aesthetics.  She teaches Gender and Visual Representation: 1500-1900,  20th Century Art,  Art, Water, Ecology, and 20th Century Feminism and Art.

Despite her love of travel and the long, tangled history of “female” figured as “nature” and vice versa (which far too often has proven detrimental to both), Professor Gamble has to admit that she is most at home in the pulsing lens of a radiant Florida spring.  Her Art, Water, Ecology course takes the rapidly declining conditions of our springs and aquifer as a powerful case study for exploring eco-art practices.  Having a personal code of honor that never asks students to undertake an assignment she has not attempted herself, Gamble’s response was to create The Springs Eternal Project in partnership with nature photographer John Moran. See: SpringsEternalProject.org