Opening performance / Saturday, July 27, 2019 / 4:30 - 7:30

37B Main Street / Narrowsburg, NY

SELF-MADE proposes a personal, queer investigation into the intersecting American ideals of masculinity and self-reliance present in the myth of the “self-made man.” Gina creates multi-part sculptural objects using wood, steel, pedal-power, and other iconic 19th and 20th century materials to connect object making, self-making, and the construction of identity. The work explores the potency and absurdity of an ideology that equates self-reliance and manual labor with nationalist glory, virility, and freedom. She draws attention instead to her own questions about the political possibilities of vulnerability, futility, and failure.

Gina Siepel is an interdisciplinary artist based in Greenfield, MA. Her work explores cultural understandings of nature, gender, and American history, through the production of objects and collaborative experiments in public spaces. She has exhibited extensively in the northeastern US, and has received funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Berkshire Taconic Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, and the Northampton Arts Council. She has been an artist-in-residence at Skowhegan, Sculpture Space, Hewnoaks, and the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. Gina holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase, an MFA from the Maine College of Art, and teaches in the dep’t of Studio Art at Mount Holyoke College.