Leslie

Siegel

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Leslie Siegel

Leslie Siegel is a Brooklyn-based artist working through a self-described untrained, deductive process, cutting, pasting, and layering since childhood. She gravitates toward uncategorizable imagery, salvaged surfaces, and the vulnerability of materials like origami paper. Her practice moves circularly, returning to incomplete moments and finding satisfaction in the various outcomes that emerge from a single mark or fragment.
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In the Words of the Artist

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I am at heart a deductor; too much information overloads me. I aim to be a blank slate, not to force things, and to let that gift of connection overtake me. Some days you have it, some days it’s just experiments. Those little failures are necessary, though; they plant a seed you can go back to later. There are literally stacks of half-baked little moments waiting to be re-imagined and contextualized. So it’s a very circular process.

I’ve been cutting and pasting since I was a little kid. I’ve always had a hard time in school or with any kind of formal instruction; I consider myself untrained, so having this cut/paste language is really how I am happiest and most comfortable communicating.

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There is no overriding theme that connects my work. I tend to work in series, which allows me to delve into one idea or material and let it take off. The grouping is also a structure and organizing tool that I inherently need. I find variation stemming from one main thing almost primally satisfying as a process, and also in other people’s work.

I sometimes start by scribbling or gluing stuff randomly with no intentionality except that the thing will not be shown to anyone, which frees me up to not try too hard. There’s a lot of rubbing layers down with my hands, and I’m pretty messy, so glue and paper-bubbling happen. Some days, a neater, more careful version of me shows up. I like to pretend to draw like an architect with none of the skill. If I’m onto something I like, I shoot pics as I go, do a lot of cropping, and try to reduce it to the least amount of elements.

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I need a wide variety of pens and markers, ink more than paint, and previously used paper or wood as a surface. I’m attracted to uncategorizable images, stuff that’s hard to place, or is off in some way. I use origami paper in kind of the opposite way it’s intended; I like how vulnerable to glue, mark-making, and creasing it is. Material with history that evokes that unexpected, compelling feeling; you know it when you see it.

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About the Artist

In addition to art-making, Leslie Siegel has worked as a prop stylist/set designer, surface hunter, filmmaker, music editor & shop owner. Her work has been included in shows at The Drawing Center and Los Raros/Los Raras: New Narratives in Contemporary Collage and appeared in Synonym, Cut Me Up, The Weird Show, Contemporary Collage Magazine and (forthcoming) Plastikcomb magazine.

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