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Treacy Ziegler

Contributor

BSR Contributor Since December 28, 2013

Treacy Ziegler is an exhibiting artist represented in Philadelphia by the Stanek Gallery. Ziegler also volunteers as an art teacher in prisons, and has a through-the-mail art program for 2,300 incarerated people, mostly in solitary confinement, throughout the United States. She lives in Newfield, NY; her website is www.treacyziegler.com.

Treacy Ziegler has been exhibiting her art in Philadelphia for 29 years, having graduated from Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Previous to PAFA, she received a MSW from University of Pennsylvania and BS in community mental health from Drexel University. The Stanek Gallery in Old City represents her art. She works in the mediums of sculpture, painting, and printmaking.

Ziegler also is volunteer art director for the distance-learning program Prisoner Express, affiliated with Cornell University. In this capacity she develops art projects for 9000 incarcerated people who participate in the program from prisons across the United States. Many of these people are living in solitary confinement; often their only link to the world is through letters.

Ziegler’s most recent art consists of life-size and larger-than-life animal sculptures, made from the over 20,000 letters received annually from behind bars through the Prisoner Express program.

Artist website: www.treacyzieglerfineart.com

By this Author

39 results
Page 1
There’s a growing public appetite for art by people in prison, like this 2013 ink drawing by Jerome Washington, who is in a Pennsylvania state prison. (Image courtesy of the author.)

Can museums present art created inside prisons without retrying offenders?

The exhibition of incarceration
As art by people in prison becomes a sought-after prize for museum exhibitions, Treacy Ziegler wonders how artists, curators, and the public grapple with questions of moral judgment and acceptability.
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Essays 6 minute read
Exploring the vulnerability of parent/child relationships: 1997’s ‘Miss Lou’ by Rachel Bliss; mixed media on panel. (Image courtesy of the artist.)

Let’s be honest: Do we really seek out art when we’re in pain?

Beauty and affliction
We always say that art matters, but what value does art really have when we’re living through the worst of times? Artist Treacy Ziegler goes beyond the platitudes.
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Articles 5 minute read
Those perfectly imperfect vessels. (Photo courtesy of the Mütter Museum)

The Mütter Museum presents David Orr's 'Perfect Vessels'

Measuring perfection among the imperfect
The Mütter Museum's new exhibition, 'Perfect Vessels,' leads Treacy Ziegler to wonder about the relationship between art and science.
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Articles 4 minute read
The trees in summer 1959 bore strange fruit. (Drawing courtesy of Reginald McFadden, Attica prison)

Eastern State Penitentiary's 'Prisons Today: Questions in the Age of Mass Incarceration'

Part two: When facts hide the truth
In part two of Treacy Ziegler's two-part series on Eastern State Penitentiary's current exhibitions, she examines the stories behind the displays and asks more questions than the museum can answer.
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Essays 5 minute read
Jesse Krimes's 'Apokalupstein16389067: 11.' (Photo by Jesse Krimes)

2016-2017 Artist installations at Eastern State Penitentiary

Part one: The power of space
Artist and prison volunteer Treacy Ziegler looks at Eastern State Penitentiary's 2016-2017 artist installations and wonders what is gained and lost by gallerizing incarceration.
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Essays 4 minute read
'Self-Defacing,' sculpture by Richard Ranck. (Photo by Richard Ranck)

Richard Ranck, divesting knowledge in The Art of the State

In pursuit of the naïve
Artist Richard Ranck attempts to "divest" his sculpture of meaning, and Treacy Ziegler finds unintentional meaning in her own paintings.
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Articles 5 minute read
'Red Studio' Henri Matisse, 1911, Museum of Modern Art.

An artist considers the nature of color

The mysterious intimacy of color
When taking a color-blindness test at the eye doctor's, I give the expected answer of “red,” but can’t help but wonder what conceptual rule I am following in my agreement.
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Articles 5 minute read
Anado McLauchlin’s house in Mexico (Photo courtesy of the author)

Has beauty been usurped in contemporary art?

Expelling the beautiful
It’s understandable that beauty has been discouraged in art school. Traditionally, it has been codified, held to a standard. What would happen if beauty were unleashed?
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Articles 5 minute read
"Untitled." Drawing by Steve Fegan, alumnus of San Francisco Art Institute, now living at Pleasant Valley State Prison, California. Courtesy of the artist.

Questions of truth and identity

Beneath the burden of truth lies the questions of art
Needing for absolute truth, we create absolute power to defend that truth. Can the ambiguity within art assist us in embracing the paradoxes of living and eliminate the need for this boundless power?
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Essays 5 minute read
Did Théodore Géricault exploit the 15 people who survived? In all, 147 were set adrift on rafts after an 1816 shipwreck. (“The Raft of the Medusa,” 1819)

Exploitation and social activism in modern art

Making art out of other people's problems
Trained in both art and social work, Treacy Ziegler unpacks some of the complicated issues around art, exploitation, and social activism.
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Articles 5 minute read
What was Rodin expressing? (The author's drawing of a Rodin portrait head, used by permission)

Rilke, Rodin, and essence

Creatures and things
At the Rodin Museum, I find students drawing the sculptures on pedestals that are surrounded by space. In this silent camaraderie, I, too, draw the figures. But drawing the figures presents a challenge, becoming an activity of charting unknown territory.
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Articles 5 minute read
“Door of death row cell” by Arthur Tyler. Monotype. (Courtesy of the artist)

Drawing the imagery of death row

A door, a bed, and a toilet
I ask Arthur Tyler, released from death row, if art might be a means to explore life on death row. I don’t know what I mean by this question. Yet I know drawing can be an excavation of what is seen, so I ask him to keep a visual journal, drawing whatever comes into his head, like visual free associations.
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Articles 5 minute read
Ontologically distinctive: Andy Warhol, “Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn)”, 1967. (© The Andy Warhol Foundation)

An artist considers Instagram again

Trapped in the hall of mirrors
What is the context that defines art in social media, where anyone doing anything can post something and call it art? Does art seek a context beyond Instagram for its validation, or does Instagram create the context?
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Articles 5 minute read
Kapturing kitsch. (Photo by Susan Hack, courtesy of the photographer)

An artist considers Instagram

Wandering through the #Instamuseum
Instagram, where 300 million active users post 70 million new photos daily, is actively creating a virtual museum.
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Articles 5 minute read
Drawing at the museum by Marguerite Hart (courtesy of the artist)

Knowing through drawing

When everyone draws
In my world, I imagine a free Draw at the Art Museum Day where everyone is invited to draw; draw not what one is shown but what one sees in order to forge relationships where the chatter is left behind.
Treacy Ziegler

Treacy Ziegler

Articles 5 minute read