LAURIE SIEGEL SCULPTURES

Sculpting feels like a conversation, unplanned, intimate, like two friends sharing coffee.

 

I may not know where it will lead, but I know I will leave feeling enriched. We can talk for hours and hours or just briefly look at each other. Each mark, dent, or imperfection reflects the traces of this intimate exchange. 

 

Shaping clay by hand mirrors the ways we shape relationships. Every touch transforms it, never leaving it as it was before. It cannot go back, only forward just as every gesture, movement, and conversation we have with each other, long or brief, transform our relationships into something new. For better or worse, we move, never staying in the same place. 

 

Clay has a memory, just like we do. The first mark is never erased, which is either maddening or perfect. This memory, created by some combination of the molecular structure, pressure, or time in the earth, gives clay its resilience and unpredictability forcing the outcome to carry traces of both control and surrender.  

 

The organic and sometimes ambiguous shapes and gestures I create are meant to evoke emotions, movement, and the fragile spaces between people as we embrace, stumble, fail, repair, but strive for connections, despite all its complexities. 

 

With clay, as with people, I am always listening, always beginning again.

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Laurie Siegel Sculptures