collaborations

Mother Art:
A performance/installation collective was active from 1973 until 1987. ​

Recently, three of us have reunited to participate in Pacific Standard Time, an initiative of the Getty Museum examining Los Angeles art from 1945 to 1980.
Visit Mother Art at: https://motherart.org

Artists Formerly Known as Women:
Six artists who collaborate on installation projects related to the environment and water.

Visit Website here: http://whosewater.org
Left: Siegel and Foster performing a coyote story 
Middle: Coyote wheel and story book
​Right: Margaret Oakley signage
Photos: Phillip Otto

​​Coyote Winter
​Coyote Winter, December 2018, an installation /performance piece conceived by Margaret Oakley. Margaret constructed large informative panels regarding coyotes and placed them at different locations along the path in Rio de Los Angeles State Park. She invited other artists to participate. My station was located at the bench I had designed and was a wheel of fortune that viewers spun. When the arrow landed on a segment, I, my grandson, or two professional actors (Ray and Kay Foster) read the accompanying story.

Remembrances
Remembrances,  November 2018, an exhibit in the niches of the tunnel of the Southwest Museum. Artists examined various funeral customs in different countries from Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, as well as personal reflections of loss.
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Together with my daughter-in-law, Sara and grandson Alec, we constructed a diorama of funeral practices in Nicaragua, Sara’s native country. This was particularly poignant as it followed suppression, killing and jailing of citizens protesting Daniela Ortega’s call for cuts to social security. The coffee beans, a major export of Nicaragua, represented the more than 300 people killed during this time.
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Remembrances, mixed media, 2018. (photo: Martha Benedict)

NELAscapes
NELAscapes was held August, 2018 at Avenue 50 Studio. My piece was a large poster depicting the streets of Mt. Washington named after birds. I created the map, drawings and information on the streets. Leslie Nord took photos of birds in the area and Cidne Hart formatted the piece into a free handout for viewers.
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Suzanne Siegel and Leslie Nord with Birds Streets installation and handouts for NELAscapes.
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Rachel & Suzanne Siegel, Home / Away at Chez Shaw Gallery. (Photo: Phillip Koebel)
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Cosmos, mixed media collaborative diptych, 2018

Home / Away
Home and Away: A Mother & Daughter Collaboration, by Suzanne Siegel and Rachel Siegel. Mother and daughter, create a series of postcard size pieces through the mail. Preliminarily, each artist created artwork based on the themes of domestic spaces and travel places. They then mailed each other 5x7 inch drawings, collages or photographs, manipulated them, sometimes adding, paint, stitching and other elements and sent them back, sometimes for another round of additions until each felt completed.
 
Suzanne started her set of images with drawings of chairs, documenting almost all the  chairs in her house. Rachel focused her imagery on photographs of architecture, clouds or water from her recent travels to France and Italy. Other symbolic and potent feminine imagery emerged and overlapped, including, birds, butterflies and laundry. 

This body of work was displayed at Chez Shaw Gallery in Long Beach, CA, October 2018 until January 2019. This collaboration was displayed, along with each artists’ solo work. Thanks to Lynn Shaw & her gallery assistant, Nat Losbaker.

Exhibition Review by Carol Colin, in L.A. Art New: la-art-news-review-2019-email.pdf
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None, One and Two, mixed media collaborative triptych, 2018

Suzanne Siegel and Kay Brown: 
​Figueroa Women, installation in the window of Kitchen Mouse  Restaurant, part of Fig Jam celebrating Figueroa Street in Highland Park,  Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Great Streets Initiative, 2016.

An accordion fold book examined the role dynamic women have played in the history of the Northeast Los Angeles neighborhood, starting with Native Americans, through Maria Catalina Verdugo, who inherited half the Verdugo rancho from her father, to Idah Mae Strobridge, a 19th century bookbinder, to Mexican America women railroad workers in World War II, to County Supervisor, Gloria Molina to community activist Amy Inouye.

​The installation featured a number of women’s gloves suspended from the ceiling holding a variety of common objects. 

Suzanne Siegel and Kay Brown:  The Gathering, an installation for Reconsidering the Arroyo, an art exhibition juried by NewTown along the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena, 2013. 

​This installation featured pairs of past and contemporary figures representing important historical aspects of the Arroyo Seco. Native American Tong-va, stewards of the land contrasted with Pasadena Park personnel working to restore the Arroyo to its natural state. Manuel Garfias, the last owner of San Pascual Rancho was partnered with Schrifin Lopez, who continues the agricultural tradition as an expert horseman at the local stables. Benjamin Wilson who bought the Rancho from Garfias and subdivided the land for Pasadena contrasted with Philip Koebel, an attorney working to keep local residents in their homes. Printmaker Frances Gearheart created work inspired by the Arroyo in the 1920s. Her contemporary counterpart, Linda Arreola, creates abstract work. Generations of young people used the Arroyo as a playground, Julia Child (nee McWilliams) may have read a book under this tree, while Maxine Endieveri now uses her I-pad in the same place.

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