2025
3rd Place recipient
Elise Siegel
The underlying motivation for my artwork has always been to give concrete form to fragmentary bits of consciousness: moments of inner conflict, disquiet, ambivalence and unease; and in doing this, create work that generates a psychological tension with the viewer. Since 2010, I have been creating ceramic portrait busts that explore the abstract edges of figurative representation. Although each sculpture is a distinct individual, they are not portraits of specific people. Rather, they are meant to embody familiar psychic states while remaining open-ended, acting as vessels for the viewer’s own projections. The challenge for me is to imbue each piece with the immediacy of human experience, and through my process, allow each sculpture to project a sense of its hidden life—to create an object that comes to life while remaining a thing.
I think of what I do as a kind of intimate interaction with the clay: a conversation, a dance, an exploration, or a wrestling match — an engagement in the unpredictable present moment, rather than an attempt at control. Hopefully, the resulting sculptures are embodiments of this experience.
My work has led me to think deeply about the transformative nature of our relationships with objects. Objects change us. We connect with them. We animate them, use them, learn from them, and empower them with all kinds of meaning and at times, even agency. This is the realm of the uncanny and the religious ritual. For me it is also the realm of art.
