Artist-led technology Artist-led technology Artist-led technology

If you lived in Seattle in the early 2000s, you may remember a nondescript century-old storefront in Belltown that expanded upstairs into an Alice in Wonderland-like art space. Called the McLeod Residence, the art gallery, bar and social club housed incredible art installations, creative cocktails and fleur-de-lis wallpaper.

Members adopted the McLeod family name and paid a small fee or contributed something of value. Co-founded by Buster McLeod (born Erik Benson, ’98) and curator Lele Barnett (formerly Leanne Ng, ’99), the McLeod Residence sought to create “a home for extraordinary living through art, technology and collaboration.”

For Barnett, the project marked the start of a career focused on bringing artists and technologists into conversation. Her first exhibition featured multimedia artist Paul Rucker, whom she met while working at the Seattle Art Museum. Over the McLeod Residence’s two-year run, Barnett collaborated with artists from the UW’s DXARTS program, including Allison Kudla, ’11, and Hugo Solis, ’14, whose “Tell-Tale Piano” concealed a piano beneath the floorboards.

When the McLeod Residence closed in 2008, Barnett joined Artist Trust before becoming curator of the Microsoft Art Collection, where she acquired new work for Microsoft buildings across North America. Later, while working as a private art consultant, Barnett was approached by Tamar Benzikry, ’05, a curator and producer at Facebook, to fill in during her maternity leave. Barnett curated and oversaw art installations for the company’s Open Arts program. She later transitioned to Meta’s Reality Labs, collaborating with renowned computer architect Doug Carmean. They brought artists into scientific research environments “to get researchers to think in different ways and inspire artists to make different work,” Barnett says.

In February, Barnett and Carmean founded xispa (pronounced CHEE-spa), an independent art innovation lab in South Lake Union. The project encompasses an artist-in-residence program, an innovation lab and exhibition space where artists and technologists can experiment beyond the traditional boundaries of museums or galleries. The lab will host a public launch on June 18 from 5–7 p.m. at MadArt Studio, where works in progress by Susan Robb, ’95 will be featured.

Barnett is excited about Seattle’s evolution. “When I got here in the ’90s, I wanted a bigger, more energetic, driven city,” she says. “It’s growing into the city that I wanted it to be.”

Barnett, a native of Southern California and a daughter of a software engineer and a landscape architect, moved to Seattle in 1995 to study art history and studio art at the UW. To pay her way through college, Barnett sold luggage and leather bags, a balancing act that meant she couldn’t spend as much time with her studies as she would have liked, she says.

She counts Professor Jerome Silbergeld among her favorites. She still has a paper she wrote for his art history course. “His comments on it made me cry,” she says. “It said something like, ‘How did I miss spending more time with you?’ He was at the top of his field. To get that kind of encouragement was very special and made me think I could be an art historian.”

Combining her backgrounds in sales and art, Barnett went on to work for Traver Gallery and Foster/White Gallery at a time when Seattle was a major destination for art collectors. She spent some time in New York and California before returning to Seattle in 2006 and launched McLeod Residence.

Over the years, Barnett’s curatorial interests have led to her organizing shows at regional museums including “Cultural Transcendence,” an exhibition highlighting art and technology, and “Reorient: Journeys Through Art and Healing,” both at the Wing Luke Museum. Her latest, “Finding Home: The Chinese American West,” features UW Professor Zhi Lin and artists Monyee Chau and Mian Situ, and is currently on view at the Tacoma Art Museum.

Lead photo: Lele Barnett in an art installation by Pepe Mar at Faena Miami. Courtesy Nadine Salem.