image credit: Hannah Blunt
Artist Statement
As an artist who works with wood, I’m interested in the ancient relationship between humans, trees, and forests, and how it might be deepened and transformed through queer ecological and post-humanist perspectives in an era of climate crisis. My process employs a biological understanding of trees as well as structural knowledge of wood, beginning with ecologically respectful gathering methods, and integrating traditional woodworking with sculpture, video, installation, natural history, research, and public engagement. Recent works investigate organic and industrial materials, drawing inspiration from vernacular woodworking traditions, utopian geometries, cast-off materials, and engagement with local plants. I work in forests, on rivers, and in urban spaces, responding to places through the creation of artworks ultimately exhibited in galleries or installed on site. My works invite viewers to consider the tensions and complexities inherent in the entanglement of nature and culture in the contemporary moment.
Bio
Gina Siepel (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and woodworker. Gina’s sculptural, participatory, and time-based works are rooted in an abiding fascination and deep relationship with land and material, and arise from engagements in the forests, waterways, and cities of the northeastern US. Their practice employs a queer perspective on ecology, site-specificity, and history, integrating conceptual concerns with a focus on wood as a natural and cultural material. Gina’s work has been shown in museums, galleries, and outdoor sites nationally, including the Museum for Art in Wood, the Colby Museum, the DeCordova Museum, Smith College Museum of Art, Vox Populi Gallery, and the Langlais Art Preserve. Gina has received fellowships from Skowhegan, the Winterthur Museum, the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute at Smith College, and the Vermont Studio Center, among others. She has been awarded grants from the Center for Craft, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Puffin Foundation, and the Northampton Arts Council. Gina holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase and an MFA from the Maine College of Art. They currently teach in the MFA program at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and are a MacLeish Field Station Artist-in-Residence and research affiliate in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at Smith College.
Gina is originally from rural western New York, and lived in New York City, Maine, and eastern Massachusetts, before arriving in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts (Nipmuc, Pocumtuck, and Abenaki land), where they now live with their partner and frequent collaborator, interdisciplinary artist and choreographer Sara Smith.