Mel Ziegler: Clear Skies offers equal representation of Ziegler’s current solo practice alongside his decade-long creative partnership with artist Kate Ericson. This is the first exhibition juxtaposing Ziegler’s work with work from the Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler Foundation archive.

As a collaborative duo, Ericson and Ziegler created a substantial body of public projects, site-specific installations, and mixed-media sculptures, all marked by a keen social conscience and understated humor.  In 2005, a traveling retrospective exhibition titled America Starts Here, was organized by the Tang Teaching Museum and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As described by their respective curators, Bill Arning and Ian Berry, “Ericson and Ziegler redefined public art in a way that was welcoming to a diverse set of communities. Rather than impose a conspicuous work of art upon a site or situation, the artists devised projects that altered sites subtly, using poetic language and their idiosyncratic wit to illuminate mainstream American contexts and highlight individual community issues.”

Mel Ziegler was born in 1956 in Pennsylvania. Ziegler began his undergraduate studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, later transferring to the Kansas City Art Institute to complete his BFA in 1978 and earning an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1982. From the late 1970s until her death in 1995, Ziegler collaborated with his partner, Kate Ericson. In addition to his ongoing studio practice, Ziegler has served as Professor of Sculpture at the University of Texas in Austin, and Chair of the Art Department at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. In 2014, Ziegler established the Sandhills Institute—a civically-engaged art program and residency integrated in and around the agricultural community of Rushville, Nebraska. Ziegler currently divides his time between Santa Fe, NM and Rushville.

Generously supported by OJAC Members.