Artist Leslie Hinton (b.1983), a native of Tennessee, made her mark in Columbia between 2006 – 2009, when she completed an MFA at the University of South Carolina art department. Her MFA thesis exhibition was Luna Tic Tac Toe, a memorable spectacle at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios in Columbia. She holds a BFA from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. Leslie Hinton has lived in Marshall, North Carolina and had a studio on the Island of Blannassett amid the French Broad River. The island can only be accessed by walking on the backs of old ladies wrapped in quilts. Prior to this Leslie lived in Columbia, South Carolina where she had huge dreams and aspirations of creating sculptures that would somehow cure global hunger and solve all war starting conflicts—yet alas her studio itself looked like and felt like a war zone. Hinton creates outrageous and funny, intricate ceramic sculptures and drawings featuring figures and animals, often together, in fantastical situations that have a stream-of-consciousness quality. Since 2005, she has been in more than two dozen exhibitions in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, California, Hawaii, and Taiwan, where in the spring of 2008 she studied at Tainan National University for the Arts. Leslie now lives in San Antonio, Texas.