Art

“In pursuit of the naïve,” courtesy the artist, Treacy Ziegler. Collection of the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College.

Artist Statement

I have been making art for the past 25 years. Trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia for 4 years, I initially worked in painting and printmaking. At the Academy, I developed monoprints incorporating lessons I learned through painting; thus allowing the prints to have the saturated color of painting.

For the past 20 years, I have lived in upstate New York on 85 wooded acres surrounded by nature with my husband, son, two parrots, and two dogs. Animals are a large part of my life. In addition to a taxidermy collection in my own studio, I have spent hours drawing at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and various natural history museums. Drawing is crucial in the development of art – observing the world and developing a dialogue with it through art.

I am fortunate to have a studio large enough to work in the multi-medias of printmaking, painting, and sculpture; including two large presses and a bronze foundry. I began working in sculpture about three years ago. After drawing from life on a regular basis (and drawing the roundness of living) my hand wanted to take a turn off the 2-dimensional world of painting into three dimensions of clay sculpture. I cast the clay into bronze myself, taking the process through every step of foundry – mold making, wax, ceramic shell, pouring the bronze, welding and patina.

Before art school, I received a Masters in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2009, I began exhibiting my art and volunteer teaching in maximum-security prisons. In addition to teaching in-prison, I volunteer as the program art director for the Prisoner Express, a through-the-mail distant learning program for prisoners. In this voluntary capacity, I develop art curricula for 9000 prisoners across the United States representing every state and about 700 prisons. I receive approximately 20,000 letters a year from these prisoners. In the past three years, I have developed paper cast sculpture from these letters.

Learn more: https://treacyzieglerfineart.com/ |  The Maier Museum