Leslie Mann has been building little structures in one way or another since he was a child.
What started with locking together Legos and stacking simple toy building blocks eventually turned into a successful adult career in Toronto as an architectural model-maker.
His passion saw him become a prolific creator of scale model structures for land developers, starting at a time in the 1970s when the provincial capital’s ship and rail yard-dominated waterfront was being transformed into one of the most modern skylines in the country.
“My first commercial client was the CN Tower,” the St. Davids resident says proudly.
“That was how I ended up getting started.”
Originally, he had attended art school with the hopes of using his creativity to become an illustrator.
However, after recognizing how lucrative architectural scale modeling could be, and apprenticing under a few Toronto model-makers, the calls for his services picked up and the art side of his career dropped off.
“I was always so busy, I never had time to go back.”
Back to creating art
Now, at 67 years old and looking for a different pace of work to complement his looming retirement years, Mann has once again pulled an about-face and is returning his focus to art.
His next endeavour? Creating 3D portraits of Niagara-on-the-Lake’s historic homes, commercial buildings and structures.
His first works, scale models of the Queen’s Royal Park gazebo, the Royal George Theatre and the Sherlock Block, will be displayed at the Niagara Pumphouse Art Centre’s Juried Art Show and Sale on Aug. 3 and 4.
The creative inspiration came to him, he says, after he began volunteering at the art centre.
“Since joining the Pumphouse, I have seen a lot of different medias presented from other artists and a lot of their subject matter is the architecture of Niagara-on-the-Lake, so I thought, ‘Why can’t I use what I know to produce something in the same sort of idea?'”
Just as he turned to creating commercial models all those years ago due to the sheer amount of work available, he is now faced with a plethora of subjects for his new focus.
“Niagara-on-the-Lake is so full of historical buildings,” he says. “It is endless. My goal was to get these pieces ready to submit (to the Pumphouse) and hopefully they would accept them, and they did.”
Mann believes the public will enjoy his creations as well, from both art and historic preservation points of view.
“I consider it art and something people would enjoy putting on their walls,” he says.
“And in the paper you hear all the time how we must preserve our architecture. I am certainly in support of keeping these buildings alive in whatever fashion.”
