Artists Tammra Sigler and Carolyn Reed are tethered by loss. For Sigler, it’s the loss of her husband of 62 years. He’s in her painting “Blocks and Clouds.”
“I didn’t go out to paint him or about him,” Sigler said. “But when I looked at it afterward and thought about it, that was my secret. Now you know.
Arnold died a year ago. But Sigler remains tethered to him. It’s more than emotional. It’s part of her world view.
“I am talking about all of us being tethered to each other, not just as humans, but as living matter,” said Sigler. “All living matter on this Earth, and all living matter, if you will, in the universe, in the cosmos, and if there is beyond, who knows.”
Carolyn Reed’s mother died when Reed was 20 years old.
Six months ago, Reed came across on old photo of her mother on vacation in Arizona in a box of family heirlooms her brother sent her. The discovery propelled Reed onto a philosophical journey.
“Because her back is [to the viewer] in the picture, I was so compelled to think, ‘What was she thinking? Is she thinking of the beauty? Is she thinking of her own significance, a sense of place in the universe? It just brought me honestly closer to maybe a conversation I would have with her today.”
Reed incorporated that photo into the trunk of a tree in her Naples Invitational mixed media painting.
“Trees are one of the most beautiful things on Earth,” said Reed. “They're all different, and we're all different, and that's the beauty of it.”
Naples Invitational is on view at the Naples Art Institute through Oct. 24.
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Tammra Sigler works from her studio in the Naples Art District, but continues to paint, print, teach and mentor in the Baltimore area as well.
Her work has been shown extensively, and she has been awarded many prizes in the Baltimore/Washington area as well as Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Lexington, Palm Beach, Naples, and throughout South America.
Sigler’s paintings and monotypes are part of the permanent collections of The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. and the Baltimore Museum of Art, as well as many private and corporate collections nationally and internationally.
Her work has been selected twice (1994, 2000) to be represented in the national publication, “New American Painting,” by Open Studio Press.
A few of the corporate collections that house her work are: Chase Manhattan Bank of New York, Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co., Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, Health Insurance Association of America, Federal Reserve Bank of Virginia, Ayres/Saint/Gross Inc., Shelter Development Corporation, Murdock Development Corporation of Los Angeles, Deloitte and Touche, The Johns Hopkins Oncology Center, Percontee Corporation, Sheppard Pratt Health System, Gordon Feinblatt Rothman Hoffberger and Hollander, Piper and Marbury, University of Maryland, Towson University, and The Maryland Institute College of Art.
Sigler studied painting at Syracuse University, School of Fine Arts and earned a BFA with honors in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
“Blocks and Clouds” is one of a series.
The Naples Art Institute has devoted an entire alcove to Sigler’s work at this year’s biennial. The back wall of the alcove features 48 squares that were all cut from a housepainter’s used drop cloth.
“I offered him a new drop cloth and asked him for his old one,” Sigler related. “I came home. I washed it. Not to make it clean, but to get floor dirt off. And then I cut it up into irregular squares. And I call this ‘Tethered.’”
In the installation, Sigler invites viewers to reflect upon the ways we are all connected … or tethered … to each other, just as Sigler is tethered to the housepainter who supplied the drop cloth for this series.
Several of the paintings in “Tethered” include geometric constructions.
“These geometric forms are not typical for me,” she noted. “Ordinarily, I’m pretty organic. But in my other block paintings, some of that was beginning to come in. Some of that was coming into my work. And then these happened,” she said walking to the adjacent wall where “Blocks in the Fourth Dimension” hang side by side.
The title signifies their otherworldly nature.
“To tell you the truth, at first, I called them ‘capsules,’” Sigler said. “They’re actually all about the mark and feeling the mark.”
This is Sigler’s second appearance in the Naples Invitational. She has also been selected twice by the Baker Museum of Art for inclusion in its annual “Florida Contemporary” exhibition.
On the other side of the Naples Art Institute’s massive gallery, Carolyn Reed fielded questions from people admiring her mixed media work, “A Sense of Place.”
“This is the most experimental work I've ever done,” she told one viewer. “I've never experimented with materials like this. It’s a combination of old rags that I've collected from other paintings, netting, monoprints that I put in a box. But what started the painting was the photograph of my mother, Shirley.”
Reed creates immersive mixed media paintings and drawings that tap into the physiological landscape of body and space, provoking emotional, visceral and perceptual responses. Utilizing photography as a tool, she memorializes the heightened tactile experience of the natural environment. Her work provokes a deeper investigation into our connection to the all-encompassing power of nature.
While she employed a host of unfamiliar materials, that remained her overriding goal.
“When you combine it all, especially the palette, it's very naturalistic,” Reed acknowledged. "I am in constant awe of nature. My mother was a very spiritual person. I imagine her contemplating the magnificence of the space, the land [I depict in this painting], of the trees around [the lake]. Nature is one of my primary muses. So here I have one of my most favorite people in the world in the most beautiful spot. After all, who doesn't love nature? That's why I wanted to immortalize her in the tree trunk. [in my painting].”
Born in 1957 in Detroit, Michigan, Reed has been a practicing artist since the 1990s. Her artwork has been collected by private patrons and corporations worldwide. Reed holds a BFA from Michigan State University and a Certificate of Interior Design from Parsons School of Design. She currently resides in Naples, and established her company, C.E.R. Consulting, Inc., in 2017.
This is the second Naples Art Institute biennial that has included Reed’s work. For the 2023 Naples Invitational, Reed created a work called “Storm Tears,” which reflects her emotional response to Hurricane Ian.
“It was actually three very large paintings, lots of energy,” Reed noted.
“Curiosity has always sparked my imagination, and reflection inspires me to keep moving forward,” Reed states on her website. “I am grateful to be able to express energy that builds up inside of me as I explore the world and deepen relationships. Connections and experiences are important touchstones that shape my art stories. Experimentation with various materials help interpret my emotional spectrum and core memories.”
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.