Leanne M. Benson

Leanne M. Benson is an artist and author who received her Arts degree from the University of Minnesota. Children are a vital part of Leanne’s life, and she has enjoyed working to empower young people through a number of programs and projects, including more than a decade in the English Secondary Language (ESL) Program in the public school system, as an Art Adventure volunteer and coordinator and high school Student Services secretary.

Travel is also an important part of Leanne’s life. She and her husband celebrated their wedding on the top of a mountain in Tanzania, Africa. Recently she fulfilled a lifelong dream of living in the country after she and her husband spent five years designing and building a “little cabin surrounded by woods” in southeastern Minnesota’s bluff country. It was a labor of love and a work of art of which she’s proud. She admits, “Looking out over a three-hundred-foot drop to a spring-fed trout stream inspires the artist and author in me every day.”