SHFAP presents Under the Skin, an exhibition of new works by Elise Siegel, a sculptor and ceramic artist known for installations that skirt the line between abstraction and representation. In the early 2000’s Siegel created a series of room sized installations of whole and partial ceramic figures. Since 2010, she has been making individual ceramic busts. 

Siegel takes visual inspiration from figurative sculptures and objects that have had some cultural function either in ritual or daily life – the Jomon Dogu figures of Neolithic Japan, Haniwah funeral figures, icons, reliquaries, and masks from many cultures – but her works exist in an in-between space that is familiar but evades total understanding. As busts her sculptures are fragments, but they imply full bodies and the beings that inhabit them. Their openness to interpretation and projection draws the viewer into a state of attentiveness and curiosity. Their tilted heads, empty eyes and ambiguous expressions give the impression that they both return our attention and see beyond us, charging the space between viewer and object with emotion and affect. There is both comfort and confrontation in their ambiguity, the longer you spend with them, the more they become. In her own words, Siegel is attempting “to imbue each piece with the immediacy of human experience, and through the process of making, allow each sculpture to project a sense of its hidden life – to create an object that comes to life while remaining a thing.” 

Siegel studied ceramics in art school, but went on to create two series of abstract sculptures constructed from wire mesh and modeling paste. One was inspired by the forms of the dilapidated ductwork on the city rooftops outside her studio, the other by empty garments of feminine clothing. Both used gesture to suggest an absent body. Siegel’s return to clay came out of an expressed need for a more organic process, and a more tactile one, a kind of improvisation which she describes as “a conversation, a dance, an exploration, or a wrestling match” with the material. The hollow busts made out of clay coils may emerge from a single feature or face on the street, and are worked in many iterations, with several firings. Heads and bodies are often made separately, necessitated by the size of the artist’s kiln, but as such can be mixed and matched, and allows Siegel to tilt and pose the heads, giving them more freedom of movement and character. Siegel describes this ongoing project as a relinquishing of control. 

Elise Siegel (born 1952) is an American sculptor and installation artist based in New York. Raised in New Jersey, Siegel attended the University of Chicago, where she was introduced to ceramic sculpture by Ruth Duckworth. From there, Siegel transferred to the Vancouver School of Art (now the Emily Carr College of Art and Design) to continue ceramics and sculpture in earnest. Siegel moved to New York in 1982. 

Some of her major exhibitions include Studio10, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Nancy Margolis Gallery, NY; Third World Ceramics Biennial, Seoul, Korea; Garth Clark Project Space, NY; Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan Univ., CT, Jane Hartsook Gallery, NY; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS; and Halsey Gallery, College of Charleston, SC; Laurie Rubin Gallery, NY. She has been awarded Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, and New York Fine Arts Fellowships, as well as the Virginia A. Groot Foundation grant and an Anonymous Was a Woman Award. Siegel’s work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the Chazen Museum, Madison, WI; and Arario Gallery, Seoul, Korea. This is her first time showing with steven harvey fine art projects.