Meet Lesli Marshall, Mr. Cooper’s Artist in Residence + Curator
You might already know that Mr. Cooper’s whole mission is to keep the dream of homeownership alive for our customers. The feeling of “home” is very important to us as a company, which is why we established an Artist in Residence program that brings artwork from local artists into each of our home offices. The woman who orchestrates it all, Lesli Marshall, is an artist herself — which definitely helps her do her job of curating art for Mr. Cooper. We talked to Lesli while she was working on location in Peru, hand painting a mural in the town of Magdalena De Cao.
How or when did you know that you’d be able to bring Mr. Cooper’s vision of an Artist in Residence program to life?
In 2015 Kevin Dahlstrom, Mr. Cooper’s Chief Marketing Officer, was brought onboard he told me about the artists working in California at Facebook. I loved the idea and used that as the inspiration and thought it would be so cool to have ongoing art installs from local artists where they could bring to life what “home” means to them.
What was your biggest challenge with the AIR program — the corporate-ness, the space?
There were many challenges in the beginning — the trust of the executives to allow the program to grow and expand. The first few months were difficult, because there are so many different tastes and ideas. Now, people are very open after seeing the program as a whole and what it brings to the space and to employees. And as more and more artists participate the diversity in aesthetic and media is very inspiring.