We recently connected with Fran Siegel and have shared our conversation below.
Fran, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
Residency fellowships have been essential for the evolution of several meaningful drawing installations. As these projects evolve over time and engage in-depth research about specific locations, I aim to understand them within a historical and cultural context.
An early example of this is my representation of the United States for the International Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador in 2007, I completed three site-specific works inspired by the layering of Cuenca’s ancient Inca history with Spanish colonial architecture and urban gridding, contrasted with its natural position in an Andean valley along the Tomebamba River. Seven years later, I was invited to construct a 30-foot suspended sculpture as a permanent commission for the US Embassy in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The inspiration for this 2014 artwork, made from thousands of cast porcelain branches, was an ancient Ceiba tree. For many indigenous people of Central and South America, the Ceiba has deep mystical associations, as its vast contoured roots reach into the underworld, while its massive trunk supports branches that extend into the celestial realm. While making cultural reference to the Ceiba, I also contemplated the current function of the US Consulate, as a juncture for ethnic and racial mobility through the visas it grants applicants in the global port city of Guayaquil.
This led to a yearlong commission and solo exhibition entitled Translocation and Overlay for the Art Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The project engaged earth science students and resulted in 50 drawings and porcelain objects about Santa Barbara as a failed utopia. In a feature length article for X-TRA: Contemporary Art Quarterly Fall 2014, “Fran Siegel/ De-Framing the Land,” Constance Mallinson wrote:
“The most illuminating political aspect of Siegel’s project might derive from the understanding of urban space as perpetually evolving from heterogeneous natural, social, and economic interests. Dynamic, multifaceted, rejecting any single paradigm as sufficient—subjective or objective, historical or contemporary—for representing the landscape, Siegel dis-unifies the landscape as a monolithic scenic representation.”
My relationship with South America continued when I was awarded a Fulbright to Brazil in 2015-16 that culminated in an exhibition for the UCLA Fowler Museum. Its impetus was an Afro-Brazilian Egungun ensemble from the Fowler collection that was used for spiritual ceremonies in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. I consulted advisors at the Museu Afro Brasil in São Paolo, conducted archive research with a student team in Rio de Janeiro, and produced drawing studies at the Sacatar Foundation (2015) near Salvador, Brazil. In 2017, “Lineage Through Landscape” opened at the Fowler Museum as a part of the Getty’s city-wide initiative “Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.” My forty-foot woven drawing became a discussion about power, ritual, and the use of plants to reestablish lineage between ancestry and community. I am currently extending this project by retracing the origin of botanical motifs in Portuguese architectural facades that incorporate azulejos (tin-glazed ceramic tiles). This work is taking place in collaboration with the Museu Nacional do Azulejo in Lisbon.
I am also working on a project about four Southern California wetland restoration sites for the Getty Foundation’s 2024/5 PST ART initiative, Art and Science Collide. The exhibition, “Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean,” will take place at the Oceanside Museum of Art and Crystal Cove Conservancy. I am also completing a permanent glass tile commission for the Los Angeles Metro La Brea Wilshire station that merges daily light patterns with Art Deco history and the ancient terrain of that site. With each of these projects I examine the visual tension between built and natural environments.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
After earning a BFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art of Temple University in Philadelphia and a MFA from Yale University School of Art, I became active in the New York art scene of the 90’s. I relocated to Los Angeles in 2002 to join the faculty in the School of Art at California State University, Long Beach—the largest publicly funded art department in the United States. The horizontality of sprawling Los Angeles propelled my experimentation with an open-ended form of drawing that engages multiple perspectives. Particles of visual data are joined together to form monumental composites. I am inspired by the difference between the observed natural world of plants and botanical representation as decorative motifs and patterns. I have had amazing opportunities to work internationally with residencies and exhibitions that support my discovery process. With the benefit of extended and focused periods of time, I observe closely and work onsite. Each new location provides a fresh topic to cultivate and interpret visual research.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
Cultural sustainability is maintained by the creative ecosystem chain. Collecting art is a supportive activity that reaches beyond domestic walls. Ephemeral and risky non-commercial projects are exhibited at non-profit institutions that depend on outside support to survive. As our society attempts to diversify and recalibrate the power structure, I think that it is also important to re-consider the value artists (not as bottom feeders) bring to the community given the cultural capital they provide. As government funding decreases, curators are expected to fund their own exhibitions so the power of museum trustees and donors increase, and choices unfortunately can become market-driven. This needs to be reversed. There are ways to support ambitious projects of lesser-known artists through preparatory drawings or photographs. And if there is a gallery that represents the artist, supporting them is the best way to support the artist. I also think that artists, curators, and gallerists could do a better job at including the general public so that the value of creativity can be widespread and integral to daily life.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
Most artists are creative thinkers all around. To survive we learn to be “jacks of all trades” and to problem solve. For example, on any given day I could be constructing, photographing, researching, writing, teaching, meeting, managing, outreach, reading architectural plans, etc. Perhaps the studio operates like other small businesses, but I believe that the creative mindset is not fearful of what we do not know and looks to find unique ways to approach things.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://wildingcran.com/artists/48-fran-siegel/works/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fran.siegel/?hl=en
Image Credits
Courtesy of Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles Gene Ogami Photographer