NEWS
Posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2012 12:55 pm
SERIAL ART BY DAWN HOWKINSON SIEBEL AT ECA+
Artist Dawn Howkinson Siebel exhibits “Serial Art” in the Easthampton City Arts+ Gallery from November 6 through November 27, 2012. An artist’s reception will be held on Saturday, November 10 from 5:00-8:00 p.m. as part of Art Walk Easthampton.
The artist will exhibit groups of paintings and sculptures that were created in exploration of a variety of series pulling from both memory and found objects/images. The concept of the series is the artist’s focus but once her project is chosen, she fully embraces the subject like a task or an assignment. It could be 35 individual portraits of the artist’s 1959 2nd grade class from Lincoln, Indiana or sculptures made from collected 1937 World’s Popular Encyclopedia, or collage paintings that capture women with vintage appliances found by the artist in a booklet from her grandmother’s belongings. Whatever her concept may be, the work tells a story with a vintage sometimes even intentional thrift store charm with oil painting, assemblage, and collage. Memories that embody the yesteryear of the Americana cultural landscape exudes through all of Siebel’s work, where both the individual and universal story become one.
“In Serial Art I have reached back through ten years of work to gather this selection of serial art created in a range of media.,” says Siebel. "We define ourselves by the stories we tell. They are our wisdom holders, our cultural glue. Collective stories form history; personal stories create identity."
Dawn Howkinson Siebel was born during a snowstorm in Lake County, Indiana, in 1950. For some time, she became a dyer, working in batik and hand-painting on silk. Siebel has a t-shirt in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution from this period and later sold her collection of one-of-a-kind kimonos to Bergdorf Goodman. She also mounted four solo shows of batik and collaged paintings in New York between 1975 and 1980. In 1985, Siebel embarked on an 18-month trip around the world with a set of watercolors packed into her luggage. This led to a decade of watercoloring with a day job in publishing and thoughts of illustrating children’s books. In 1994, she left New York City for Boulder, Colorado, and finally found the gumption to devote herself fully to her art. In 2010 she moved back east to manage “Better Angels,” a painting project of 343 individual oil paintings of the New York City firefighters who died on 9/11. The project has been on tour throughout the United States this past year. In the fall of 2011 she moved to Easthampton where she holds a studio at Eastworks. An ECA+ artist, Siebel is also currently exhibition her work at the 2012 Amherst Biennial.
The exhibit is free and open to the public. The ECA+ gallery is located at 43 Main Street, Easthampton, MA. Gallery Hours are Tuesday- Saturday, 12-6 p.m.
