A.I.R. Gallery

Barbara Siegel

My work deals with confluence of the mundane and surprising in tales of individual lives. Starting with autobiographical pieces about familiar domestic activities (cooking, and washing and drying clothes) that took an unexpected turn, following 9/11 I worked with fragmentary biographical materials based on the lives of 64 people who died in the World Trade Center to construct Missing, an installation about fate, hope and the transitory nature of life. Recently I’ve been inspired by people whose lives reflect unusual and creative choices: Beatrice Muller, an 86-year-old woman, lives permanently aboard the ocean-liner Queen Elizabeth II. Her husband died during a world cruise and she divested herself of her possessions to pursue passions for ballroom dancing, traveling, and socializing with her hundreds of friends on the QE2. Sea Queen includes an armada of 57 small folded paper boats (one for each year of Bea’s marriage) covered with texts related to her unique life on the water. Melvin Burkhart, “the human blockhead” was a renowned and still active sideshow performer when he died in November, 2001, at the age of 94. As the “anatomical man,” he enthralled crowds at Coney Island doing weird wonderful things with his anatomy. Block Head and Penetration Guru examine the fascinating and repellent nature of Burkhart’s talents. I met and interviewed Jennifer Miller and Lucia Leandro Gimeno in the course of working on Women with Beards, an installation about gender, physical stereotyping, and personal strength. After reading a newspaper article about Hector Wallace, the Coney Island food sign painter, and seeing the accompanying photo of Wally surrounded by his exuberant paintings of knishes, clams and corn on the cob, I was inspired to interview him and create Wally’s Clam Bar, a tribute to his unusual life and talents. I’m fascinated by the way in which the lives of these unusual individuals provide a zany tangle of the ordinary and the extraordinary, the exotic and the familiar.

Visit Gallery