CSULB Art Professor Fran Siegel in Los Angeles Times article

CSULB Art Professor Fran Siegel is in Los Angeles Times article entitled “Artists spend months, even years on a gallery show. What if no one sees it?” by Leah Ollman. As the pandemic closes down businesses and cultural outlets, artists are feeling the pain of not having their works be accessible to the eyes of those who make their work count: the viewers. “Art galleries stand darkened, empty of viewers. Like time capsules, their contents give evidence of the present day, sealed away like relics. Most shows cannot be visited, but they also aren’t coming down. They remain, like so much else, in a state of suspension.”

Professor Siegel fully installed a show at Wilding Cran, with British artist Paul Scott, which had been planned since December 2018. It was fully installed in mid-March, during a week of pandemic limbo, and never opened. But with unforeseen events comes unforeseen connections, as Siegel states, “the show itself was about translocation, pattern moving from one culture to another in the 1700s…And now the pandemic is moving from culture to culture, a virus of pattern. On a conceptual level, it’s so bizarre.”

While hers and many other shows have been paused, Professor Siegel knows artists will continue to work in spite of things, “One thing about artists being sequestered — we all know what to do with our time.”