Today we’d like to introduce you to Fran Siegel.
Hi Fran, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Art does not run in my family. So, my educational experiences at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia for my BFA and Yale School of Art for my MFA in Painting were indispensable for visualizing myself as an artist. Afterwards, I had a studio on the Bowery in New York from where I watched the trade towers’ tragic fall on that fateful September day. The next year I moved to Los Angeles to join the faculty in the School of Art at Cal State Long Beach, where I have been teaching for 20 years. I love the Los Angeles creative community- it is experimental, supportive, and far-reaching. I find the geography of the city so compelling – the diversity of its natural environment and architecture are in continuous conflict. With the lack of a master plan, Los Angeles is a visually chaotic quilt of geometries.
In order to understand its sprawl, I began a series of large-scale collage drawings based on flights I took all over the city in a colleague’s small plane. These monumental pieces are in permanent collections at LACMA, MOCA and Yale. My love for the city has also been reciprocated with the grants I have been awarded from the City of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A) Center for Cultural Innovation and the California Community Foundation. Because my curiosity leads me to develop projects in other places, residency fellowships have become an important part of my work and have taken me to Italy, Brazil, France, Ecuador, Spain and throughout the US. Often my long-term projects are initiated from these outposts beyond my studio.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
• One challenge is time. My greatest joy in teaching is feeling that my contributions have made a difference in leveling the playing field in the Los Angeles artworld and beyond. But even though my classes are only two days a week, I share mental creative space with others.
- Because I am interested in challenging the rectilinear format of painting, my unorthodox combination of materials can be perceived as fragile and ephemeral.
- My curiosity propels me to research cultures that are not necessarily my own. This can be challenging for myself and others. I was never good at staying in my own lane! In 2017 my UCLA Fowler Museum project “Lineage Through Landscape” was researched during a Fulbright to Brazil and residency at Instituto Sacatar.
- The intersection between art and commodification has led to speculative collecting. Although we are in a process of recalibrating hierarchy and power, it is questionable why artists are still considered lower on the totem pole than collectors. With the support of my gallery are and others, I have managed to keep these concerns out of the studio, but indeed this can be challenging
- The pandemic created a glitch in momentum. I had an exhibition open in March 2020 that took years to complete that virtually no one saw.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My work is an expanded form of drawing. I construct, collage, and sew together multiple sources and points of view. My 2023 exhibition “Chronicle” at Wilding Cran Gallery in DTLA explored how decorative patterns and motifs derived from landscape are modified by culture. My projects involve research and often take years to complete so I work through several ideas at once. My glass tile commission for the concourse of the La Brea Wilshire Metro Station is now in the fabrication phase. For the upcoming 2024 iteration of the region-wide “PST Art: Art & Science Collide”, I am investigating adaptive plants used in four California wetland restoration projects for an exhibition entitled “Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean.” For the past few years I have also been constructing an ethnobotanical index of indigenous plants from parts of the US, Europe and South America as a series of painted paper tiles. Originating from my on-site photographs, each unit depicts the leaves’ structure and medicinal use. This kaleidoscopic assembling is evolving as a world map where plants transcend geographical borders. Concurrently, during isolated periods of the pandemic, I chronicled my artistic practice with a series of 216 drawings based on numerical statistics and current events. Generated from these drawings is an ongoing series of painted fabric and porcelain pinwheel tapestries that are seamed together and overlayed with embroidered leaves.
What makes you happy?
I love travel, walking along the coast in San Pedro, listening to audiobooks especially read by the author, studying Portuguese, and discovering new flavors at LA restaurants and cooked at home by my partner.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://wildingcran.com/fransiegel
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fran.siegel
Image Credits
Images 1-7 courtesy of Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles images 8-9 Gene Ogami headshot- Danial Nord
