Stephan Sieg
My art practice exists at the intersection of 21st-century ceramic design and late 19th/early 20th-century Western portraiture painting. My work consists of extruder-made non-functional ceramics that are manipulated into a multitude of forms that toy with balance and precarity. Each piece embodies a gesture that is playful and often contains opposing forms that symbolize an act or conveys an emotion: two forms bound together as though they were hugging, a delicate ropy extrusion that resembles a flower and forms that are fed into one another as though they are kissing passionately.
The finishing of every piece undermines the works’ simplistic yet playful gestures. Each form is glazed and fired numerous times until it is either resolved or destroyed in the process. This technique of multiple firings guarantees that each work is finished with a unique, vibrant glaze that imparts a celebratory clumsiness, providing each completed sculpture with its own individual character. The color palette of these glazes often references specific paintings from either the 19th or early 20th-century Western art historical canon. This style of painting, which could be considered “dated” is arguably relevant today as we reconcile with the timeless issues of that bygone age, and the ever-more apparent unknown that is visually recorded in each artwork. These paintings serve as the basis for the casually accepted and revered concept of “taste,” which simultaneously delimits class structure and informs the objects and interiors we interact with regularly.
As I repurpose color palettes and visual motifs from past artworks, I meditate on how the convergence of past cultural artifacts and personal life experiences inform nuanced concepts of beauty and taste. These ceramic pieces become less like sculptural objects and more like portraits of people, couples, and relationships. With this, I often think about the idea of loss. As pieces break down due to the labored process, my practice becomes a continual performance of trying to fix things with parts that no longer belong together. I find myself trying to desperately hold onto a memory; a moment in time I wish had never passed.
Education
2023 MFA/MA - SUNY Purchase
2018 SSP - Virginia Commonwealth University Arts Sculpture + Extended Media
2016 BA - Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA
Awards and Residencies
2019-2020 Arlington Arts Center Residency Program (Arlington, VA)
2019 Hopper Prize Finalist
2019 Visiting Artist Program with the Torpedo Factory (Alexandria, VA)
Solo Exhibitions
2022 Sweet Friends (Louisville, KY)
2020 I Hate Being Ugly (Shaw, DC)
Group Exhibitions
2022 Perhaps, This Then, is the Most Fragile Landscape (Hoboken, NJ)
2022 No Sign of Land (Manhattan, NY)
2021 No Wrong Moves (Purchase, NY)
2020 Keep Me Company (Purchase, NY)
2020 Typos + Spills + Broken Glass (Brooklyn, NY)
2019 VAP Residents Exhibition (Alexandria, VA)
2018 Crockpot Crosswalk (Richmond, VA)
2018 On An Island (Richmond, VA)
2017 4th Annual Surprise Invitational Exhibit (Surprise, AZ)
2016 3rd Annual Surprise Invitational Exhibit (Surprise, AZ)
2016 Really, Really Affordable Art Show (Brooklyn, NY)
2016 First Annual National Juried Exhibition at Larkin Arts (Harrisonburg, VA)
2016 American Art Today: What is American Art? (Highlands, NC)
2016 Labor Day Art Show (Glen Echo, MD)
2016 Art Kudos International Exhibition (Online)
2016 September 2016 Creative Quarterly #44: Online Gallery (Philadelphia PA)
2016 Adams County Arts Council: Thirteenth Annual Juried Art Exhibition
(Gettysburg, PA)
2016 People, Places, Things (Glenn Echo, MD)
2016 Eidola (Carlisle, PA)
2016 Greenpoint Gallery Salon Show (Brooklyn, NY)
2016 Arts Collective Juried Show (Carlisle, PA)
2016 Hold Your Breath: Senior Works In Progress Show (Carlisle, PA)
2015 Arts Guild New Jersey: Nexus International Juried Exhibition (Rahway, NJ)
2015 Will’s Creek Exhibition: One Cubed (Cumberland, MD) 2015
2015 Cooperstown Art Association: 80th Annual National Juried Exhibition (Cooperstown, NY)
2015 Rockets From Rocks (Carlisle, PA)
2015 440 Gallery: 10th Annual Small Works Show (Brooklyn, NY)
2014 Dickinson Review (Carlisle, PA)
2014 Don’t Think About it (Carlisle, PA)
2014 Coming Together (Carlisle PA)
2013 Common Context (Carlisle, PA)
Teaching/ Creative Experience
Adjunct Professor Art History - SUNY Purchase ( August 2022 - Present)
Adjunct Professor Art - SUNY Purchase (January 2021 - Present)
Marketing and Design Coordinator (January 2020 - July 2020)
Instructor - Arlington Arts Center (January 2020- April 2020)
UX Designer/Researcher - Predictive UX (January 2019 - October 2019)
Visual Arts Teacher - Rancho Solano Preparatory (August 2016- August 2018)