The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 157

Siegel, Elise
American; (b. 1952, Newark, NJ; lives in New York City, NY)
1980–1981 Postgraduate work (sculpture) Emily Carr College of Art and Design, Vancouver, BC
1974 BFA Emily Carr College of Art and Design, Vancouver, BC
1969–1971 University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Elise Siegel first received recognition in the 1980s for her abstract animal-bone

SELECTED REFERENCES:

sculptures made of modeling paste and wire armatures. Following her early work and

Clark, Garth, and Cindi

education in sculpture at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver,

Strauss. Shifting Paradigms

British Columbia, Siegel turned to clay in the mid-1990s. Siegel found the medium

in Contemporary Ceramics:
The Garth Clark & Mark Del

of clay to be more appropriate for her eerie ceramic figures that are often clustered

Vecchio Collection. New

together in her installations. In her piece, In the room of dream/dread, I abrupt

Haven: Yale University Press;

awake clapping (2001), eight life-size ceramic child figures sit on wooden chairs
and gaze at the viewer. Later in Twenty-one Torsos and Twenty-four Feet (2004), the

Houston: The Museum of
Fine Arts, Houston, 2012.
Siegel, Elise. “Resume.“ Elise Siegel.

two groupings of ceramic children, each missing portions of their bodies, convey

Accessed January 24, 2014.

ambiguous emotions and are depicted interacting wit h one another, but never touch.

http://elisesiegel.com/es/resume

Siegel is a two-time fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts
(2007, 1988). Additionally, she has been awarded a MacDowell Art Colony Fellowship
(1988), Yaddo Art Colony Fellowship, and a Canada Council Grant (1981). Siegel has
taught ceramics at the Greenwich House Pottery in New York City since 1984.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ELISE SIEGEL WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

Twenty-four Feet
Princenthal, Nancy. “Elise Siegel
at Garth Clark.” Art in America
93, no. 3 (March, 2005): 137–138.

15 5