One of my favorite at works at Kingsborough Community College is the life-sized bronze figure by Leonda F. Finke, Woman in the Sun Seated -1988 placed in front of the Robert Kibbee Library. Finke who is in her 90s still works on Long Island and still makes castings of her works. A true master of the medium and recognized by professionals around the world, she has one of her works—a bronze portrait of painter Georgia O’Keefe, in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian. At Kingsborough, her sculpture has a real human and natural grounding that has always drawn me to it; what is it about bronze that makes it so much more serious?
Maybe it’s just me, but Finke’s work belongs somewhere permanent. The figures invite being found almost accidentally, where we can then observe them, and in doing so become more aware of our rough skins, our uncertainties, but also our own internal solidity.
One day while strolling through Seward Johnson’s Grounds for Sculpture (a magnificent place to visit), I came across another Woman in the Sun Seated -1988 by Finke, this was the same sculpture although the setting and location made it entirely new and different for me as the viewer.
As I have found out there are quite a few castings of this sculpture throughout the country, each in its own special and very different setting. It is considered one of her best (and yes –most expensive) works.
I love the fact that I could be in New Jersey or North Carolina, or perhaps in Massachusetts or Westchester, or even in Ossining , New York and see my Woman in the Sun Seated. Each time the very same and yet still very different.
Originally from New York City, Finke resides on Long Island. Exhibitions of her work have been held in states along the East Coast and in England, Finland, Germany, and Italy. She is represented in collections at Kingsborough, The Butler Institute of American Art, Ohio; Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina; the National Academy of Design, New York; New Jersey’s Newark Museum; the National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.; and other major museums, as well as private collections in this country, Japan and Europe. Besides her figurative works, Finke is also recognized internationally for her design and casting of medals, which she has been making since 1986.
Leonda Finke’s sculpture has been primarily concerned with the human figure. “There I find constantly changing forms [and] a wealth of formal vocabulary [that] is a vehicle for expressing the basic emotions that shape our lives.”
Winning her first national prize from the National Association of Women Artists in 1965, she has consistently been recognized for excellence in her work. In 1989 she was awarded the National Sculpture Society’s Gold Medal, in 1990 she received the Alex Ettl Cash Award from the National Academy of Design, and in 1991, 1992, and 1993 she again won prizes and awards from the National Sculpture Society. In 1994 she became an elected Academician of the National Academy of Design. 
She has had many solo and group exhibitions, including: Cast Iron Gallery, New York; Newark Museum, New Jersey; the National Academy of Design, New York; the American Numismatic Museum, New York; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; the Norfolk Museum, Virginia; and The Dallas Museum, Texas. Her 6 foot bronze works have been featured in the Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition at Chesterwood, the national historic museum and grounds of the American sculptor, Daniel Chester French, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Leonda Finke’s work in bronze medals has won recognition from the prestigious Federation Internationale de la Medaille. She was invited to show her work at their Medal Exhibition in Helsinki, Finland in 1990. In 1992, she was both an invited lecturer at the British Museum and had her medal, “Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own” featured on the cover of the British Art Medal society’s British Museum Exhibition Catalogue.
Her bronze portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Her medals are in the collection of the British Museum, the National Museum of American History (Smithsonian), the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, and in many private collections throughout the United States and Europe.
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